Story 3: The Hostile Takeover Of The Internet by Obama — More Taxes, More Regulation, More Control of Freedom of Speech, More Government Intervention into Business — Abolish The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — Do Not Mess With The Internet — Videos

Net Neutrality – A Slow but Sure Assault to Takeover the Internet

Will Net Neutrality Save the Internet?

NET NEUTRALITY: Blackburn Discusses on Glenn Beck Program

The Fallacy of Net Neutrality: Thomas Hazlett on the FCC & Consumer Protection

“I’m very confident a hundred years from now we won’t have an FCC,” says Thomas Hazlett, Reason contributor and George Mason economics professor.

Internet service providers are coming under scrutiny from both the FCC and net neutrality supporters who want to ensure unrestricted consumer access to the Web. However, Hazlett points out that the fear over ISPs limiting Web content is unfounded and government “has no idea what the optimal business model is” to effectively regulate.

Hazlett sat down with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie to discuss net neutrality, the Internet, and and his Encounters Broadside book “The Fallacy of Net Neutrality.”

Hank vs. Hank: The Net Neutrality Debate in 3 Minutes

On Net Neutrality, Time to Regulate the Regulators

by THE EDITORS

The Federal Communications Commission’s decision to effectively convert broadband Internet providers into regulated utility companies, stifling both technological innovation and consumer choice, is the latest example of the footrace dynamic that will dominate national domestic politics from now until January 2016: The Obama administration — or one of its purportedly independent enablers in the FCC and other federal agencies — announces sweeping and unilateral regulatory change, and the Republican-controlled legislative branch hustles to outmaneuver it. Given the respective timelines involved in executive fiat and lawmaking, the administration will almost always have a head start — but that should not stop Congress from catching up as quickly as possible.

At issue here is the question of “net neutrality,” an increasingly elastic term describing how an Internet service provider (ISP) treats any given packet of data moving through its network. On one side of the ideological divide, partisans of “neutrality” insist that every packet be treated in precisely the same way as every other packet, that none be given priority. On the other side is reality, in which the bandwidth demands of sending an e-mail from a home computer are different from those of streaming live video to a wireless device. That Netflix, for example, should be permitted to pay an Internet service provider to fast-lane its videos is, for the ideological neutralists, the first step toward another one of those science-fiction corporate dystopias that the anti-capitalists keep promising us, in this case one in which every Internet service provider becomes a “walled garden” in which consumers are hostage to the self-interested caprices of their ISPs, and therefore customers of an ISP that has an arrangement with Facebook might be relegated to pokey service when trying to use Instagram — or be blocked entirely from accessing certain Facebook competitors.

Internet users will notice that that hasn’t happened, and hasn’t shown any likelihood of happening, despite the absence of FCC regulations forbidding it. Even in the settings that most resemble “walled gardens” — for example, in-flight Internet services that do allow providers to enjoy absolute monopoly, for the duration of the flight at least — the trend has been in the opposite direction: When consumers made it clear that they were annoyed by Gogo’s unwillingness to support YouTube and streaming-video services, new products (notably services provided by the airlines themselves) came into the market to meet consumers’ demand for being able to while away that ORD–JFK segment watching funny cat videos.

The FCC’s move, then, is a typical federal regulatory enterprise: a non-solution to a non-problem.

While mainly motivated by a naïve ideological enthusiasm, net-neutrality activists fear, not without some reason, that the dominant operating model for ISPs will be something like that of cable-television providers. (Indeed, many cable-television providers are ISPs.) Specifically, they fear that ISPs will come to resemble cable companies circa 2010. The irony there is that it is the Internet itself — without any enabling regulation from the FCC — that has provided the beginnings of a solution to the problem of the general awfulness of the American cable company, with gleeful “cord-cutters” replacing their cable services with AppleTV, Hulu, and the like.

Neutrality as an operating principle has largely prevailed among ISPs in the absence of a federal mandate largely because consumers like it that way. But consumers may not always like it that way: For example, those who want faster service for downloading movies at the moment are largely restricted to paying for faster service across the board rather than paying for faster service when they want faster service — imagine the FAA’s insisting that if customers want to fly first-class on one trip, they have to fly first-class all the time. The FCC’s new rules are not aimed at preserving the effective neutrality that prevails today — they are ideologically informed measures aimed at preventing innovations in the marketplace that consumers might prefer to the current model.

To accomplish this, the FCC is reclassifying broadband providers as “telecommunication services” under Title II of the Communications Act . . . of 1934. The FCC’s recourse to a law passed during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt should give us all an idea about the sort of cutting-edge thinking that is at work here.

There is much that is unnecessary in these rules. For example, the regulation against blocking access to lawful websites addresses a situation that is largely unknown. (Some providers that serve customers of businesses open to the public do block pornographic sites, which does not seem unreasonable.) Likewise, the call for greater transparency in protocols speaks to a desirable end, though one that is hardly crying out for federal intervention.

On the other hand, the ban on creating “fast lanes” for services that would benefit from them forecloses what might be a fruitful avenue of innovation. More worrisome still is the vast, open-ended powers that federal regulators have granted themselves: The FCC has — with no congressional mandate — just given itself a mandate to forbid anything that it believes to be other than “reasonable,” or anything it judges will “harm consumers or edge providers.” (“Edge providers” essentially means those who create or distribute content.) And, of course, there is cronyism: As Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune reports, Internet-based pay-television services of the sort being contemplated by Sony (and possibly by Apple) would be specifically exempt from the fast-lane rules.

As an Internet-based concern, National Review Online has a strong preference for an open, rambling, largely unregulated Internet. We believe that intense FCC oversight is as likely to undermine those freewheeling ways and “permissionless innovation” as to preserve them — look at any other industry in which the FCC stands athwart commerce. There are measures that can and should be taken to increase competition among ISPs, and, as Julian Sanchez of Cato points out, in the event of truly cumbrous and destructive collusions between ISPs and content providers, then the prudent response would be case-by-case intervention carried out by the Federal Trade Commission rather than preemptive blanket regulation by the FCC. It takes a certain kind of crackedness to believe that “free and open” and “under heavy federal regulation” are synonymous.

Congress has the authority to legally limit the FCC’s ambitions in this matter, and it should do so, even though such efforts would probably run into an Obama veto. That’s a fight worth having. It is high time to regulate the regulators and remind the bureaucrats who in this republic is in fact empowered to make law. Likewise, Jason Chaffetz’s initiation of an Oversight Committee investigation into whether the White House improperly colluded with the FCC in formulating these new rules is to be encouraged — if only for the potential amusement in learning whether improper collusion was instrumental in this crusade against improper collusion.

Far from being dysfunctional, the Internet is one of the critical aspects of life in these United States, one that is brilliantly functional and wonderfully innovative in no small part because of the laissez-faire approach that government has historically taken toward it. Why anybody would want to make it more like a utility company is a mystery — unless one appreciates that, for those suffering from a certain progressive inclination, federal regulation is thought to be desirable in and of itself, and that the freewheeling ways of the Internet are a standing rebuke to those who would regiment and regulate practically every aspect of life.

Republican lawmakers investigate White House net neutrality push

Congressional Republicans are demanding to know how much the White House influenced the Federal Communications Commission while the agency crafted net neutrality rules.
The FCC has until Monday afternoon to produce unredacted email messages, focused on net neutrality rules, between FCC staff and officials with the Obama administration, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said in a letter to the FCC Friday. The Utah Republican is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Chaffetz’s committee is “investigating the potential involvement of the White House” in the creation of proposed net neutrality rules that the FCC is scheduled to vote on next Thursday, he said in the letter. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will propose regulations that would reclassify broadband as a regulated telecommunications service instead of a lightly regulated information service.

An FCC spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment on Chaffetz’s letter.

Several congressional Republicans have accused the White House of improperly influencing the FCC net-neutrality rule-making process, after Obama called on the agency to reclassify broadband as a regulated public utility in November. Wheeler appeared to change his position and embrace that idea after the president urged the independent agency to do so, critics have said.
But U.S. presidential administrations have repeatedly weighed in on FCC proceedings during the past 30-plus years, net neutrality advocate Public Knowledge has noted.

Chaffetz’s letter to the FCC came just two days after Republican leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee told Wheeler they were expanding an investigation into agency rule-making processes.

The Energy and Commerce Committee’s probe covers a wide range of FCC process concerns beyond net neutrality, but new reports detailing White House contact with the FCC on net neutrality raise “additional concerns about whether the commission is managing its affairs with the independence and openness required by its mandate,” committee leaders said in a Wednesday letter to Wheeler.

Republican concerns about Obama administration influence over the FCC were fueled by a Feb. 4 Wall Street Journal report saying the White House last year had set up a “parallel version of the FCC” to push for regulation of broadband providers.

Chaffetz’s letter asks for specific email messages sent by Obama administration officials to the FCC in April. On Friday, Vice.com published an exchange between administration officials and FCC staff that the website obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

GOP, tech industry mostly out of step over net neutrality issue

By NOAH BIERMAN AND EVAN HALPER contact the reporters Politics and Government U.S. Congress Federal Communications Commission John Thune Ted Cruz Rand Paul

Silicon Valley executives and activists are increasingly irritated by the feeling the GOP is not on their side

GOP lawmakers argue that FCC net neutrality proposal amounts to a government takeover of the Web

GOP lawmakers in Congress are unified in opposition to the administration approach on net neutrality

Thee intensifying debate over how to keep the Internet open and ripe for innovation has heightened tensions between Republican congressional leaders and tech entrepreneurs they have been trying to woo.

As tech firms and cable companies prepare for a fight that each says will shape the future of the Internet, Silicon Valley executives and activists are growing increasingly irritated by the feeling that the GOP is not on their side.

Republican leaders have struggled to explain to their nascent allies in the Bay Area why they are working so hard to undermine a plan endorsed by the Obama administration to keep a level playing field in Internet innovation, enforcing what the administration and its allies call “net neutrality.”

FCC chief seeks to treat Web as public utility in net neutrality fight
Arguments from the GOP that the plan amounts to a government takeover of the Web — “Obamacare for the Internet,” as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called it — are falling flat with many tech innovators.

“This is one of the most prominent moments in Internet freedom,” said Julie Samuels, executive director of Engine, a nonpartisan advocacy group that brings policymakers together with tech start-ups. “I don’t think any party can afford to be on the wrong side of this conversation.”

But Republicans, she said, are on the wrong side.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote this month to adopt the net neutrality plan proposed last week by the panel’s chairman, Tom Wheeler. The plan would regulate Internet service providers, such as Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc., as public utilities and would ban them from offering high-speed lanes to companies that pay more.

Republicans have promised to push legislation to overturn any such move, but most high-tech companies support it.

The fight comes at a time when Republicans had been making gains in Silicon Valley, a constituency of well-heeled donors and coveted millennial-generation voters who have generally been loyal to Democrats.

Prominent Republicans, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), have taken members of Congress on listening tours of tech companies. Tech money has begun flowing into GOP campaign accounts. Presidential hopefuls, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have made an aggressive case that the GOP better understands the values of privacy and freedom in the digital world.

GOP leaders had hoped to build on those gains at an event in Washington called Reboot Congress, which started Wednesday evening, where top Republican lawmakers plan to join Silicon Valley business leaders to discuss the future of the Internet.

Republicans have hoped to seize on recent Democratic policy moves that riled tech companies, including a push for strict anti-piracy rules and the Obama administration’s continued backing of National Security Agency surveillance of Internet users.
The FCC makes a breakthrough on net neutrality–but the battle isn’t over
But the hot issue in Silicon Valley now is net neutrality. And on that issue, the GOP and the tech industry are mostly out of step.

Republicans argue that intervention by a big government agency is the wrong approach to leveling the playing field for companies that depend on the Internet. That’s especially true now, as conservatives accuse Obama of a broad pattern of regulatory overreach in healthcare, the environment and immigration.

“As is often the case in Washington, those who want more power create the specter of a false threat that is not occurring in the marketplace today,” Cruz said in an interview in which he warned that new regulations could lead to new taxes and put a chill on innovation. “The power of regulation is like a camel’s nose under the tent,” he said.

In Congress, GOP lawmakers are unified in opposition to the administration approach.

That includes tech-savvy California Republicans such as Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who warns that the administration approach “will result in over-regulation and years of fruitless litigation.” McCarthy joined his House leadership colleagues in warning regulators that imposing net neutrality rules would “deter investment and stifle one of the brightest spots in our economy.”

Many Internet entrepreneurs disagree.

“The argument is a red herring,” said Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which fights alongside GOP lawmakers on privacy and surveillance issues but is helping lead the attack against them on net neutrality.

“Nobody is talking about wanting the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet. That would be terrible,” McSherry said. “All they would be doing is putting in rules of the road for broadband providers.”

Republicans, she said, are essentially helping big corporations squeeze out innovation. “Politically, this is a real mistake,” she said.

It is unclear to what extent the issue will overshadow other Silicon Valley priorities. But it is certainly making the GOP a tougher sell.

“It is close to a litmus test,” said Paul Sieminski, a Republican who is the general counsel to Automattic, the company that operates Web-making tool WordPress.com.

“It’s such a fundamental issue for the Internet,” said Sieminski, who has been active in fighting for net neutrality. “I guess it is a proxy on where a candidate may stand on a lot of issues related to the Internet.”

The fight goes beyond wealthy entrepreneurs making or seeking their fortunes in start-up companies. Silicon Valley is adept at mobilizing consumers eager to protect what they see as a core value of the digital age.

The FCC received nearly 4 million comments on the net neutrality rules — most urging them to enforce stricter regulations — before Wheeler announced his proposal last week.

Groups such as Fight for the Future, whose donors include technology companies, said they have helped initiate tens of thousands of calls from their members to regulators and lawmakers using technology that bypasses switchboards.

Polls also showed overwhelming support for the concept that big carriers such as Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast should not be allowed to charge more to companies that want a fast lane.

That may have propelled a shift among some Republicans, who once questioned the need for any new regulations.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) is proposing a bill that would let Congress, rather than regulators, set the terms for net neutrality. In establishing the concept, however, the measure also would take away the FCC’s authority to make any new regulations in the fast-changing broadband marketplace.

Thune and others frame their disagreement with Obama and federal regulators as one over process, asserting that Congress would better protect openness on the Internet yet avoid burdensome regulations.

“I worry that online innovators will be subject to the Mother-may-I system in which startups have to hire regulatory lawyers before they hire engineers,” Thune said Wednesday night as the Reboot conference began at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters in Washington.

Silicon Valley activists are unimpressed. They don’t trust the GOP-controlled Congress on this issue.

“They’re cynical attempts,” Evan Greer, campaign manager for Fight for the Future, said of the legislative proposals, “last-ditch efforts by cable lobbyists who know they’ve been beat in the court of public opinion.”

There has been extensive debate about whether net neutrality should be required by law, particularly in the United States. Debate over the issue of net neutrality predates the coining of the term. Advocates of net neutrality such as Lawrence Lessighave raised concerns about the ability of broadband providers to use their last mile infrastructure to block Internet applications and content (e.g. websites, services, and protocols), and even to block out competitors[5]

Neutrality proponents claim that telecom companies seek to impose a tiered service model in order to control the pipeline and thereby remove competition, create artificial scarcity, and oblige subscribers to buy their otherwise uncompetitive services[citation needed]. Many believe net neutrality to be primarily important as a preservation of current freedoms.[6] Prominent supporters of net neutrality include Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, and Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web.[7][8]

Examples of net neutrality violations include when the internet service provider Comcast intentionally slowed peer-to-peercommunications.[9] In 2007, one other company was using deep packet inspection to discriminate against peer-to-peer, file transfer protocol, and online games, instituting a cell-phone style billing system of overages, free-to-telecom value added services, and bundling.[10] Critics of net neutrality argue that data discrimination is desirable for reasons like guaranteeingquality of service. Bob Kahn, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, called the term net neutrality a slogan and opposes establishing it, but he admits that he is against the fragmentation of the net whenever this becomes excluding to other participants.[11] On 31 January 2015, AP News reported the FCC will present the notion of applying (“with some caveats”) Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 to the internet in a vote expected on 26 February 2015.[12][13][14][15][16]Adoption of this notion would reclassify internet service from one of information to one of telecommunications[17] and, according to Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC, ensure net neutrality.[18][19] The Obama administration said that it would not let the public see its 332 page net neutrality plan until after the FCC voted on its implementation.[20]

Definition and related principle

Net neutrality

Network neutrality is the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.[21] According to Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, the best way to explain network neutrality is as a principle to be used when designing a network: that a public information network will end up being most useful if all content, sites, and platforms are treated equally.[22] A more detailed proposed definition of technical and service network neutrality suggests that service network neutrality is the adherence to the paradigm that operation of a service at a certain layer is not influenced by any data other than the data interpreted at that layer, and in accordance with the protocol specification for that layer.[23]

Proponents often see net neutrality as an important component of an open internet, where policies such as equal treatment of data and open web standards allow those on the Internet to easily communicate and conduct business without interference from a third party.[25] A closed Internet refers to the opposite situation, in which established corporations or governments favor certain uses. A closed Internet may have restricted access to necessary web standards, artificially degradesome services, or explicitly filter out content.

Dumb pipe

The concept of a dumb network made up of dumb pipes has been around since at least the early 1990s. The idea of a dumb network is that the endpoints of a network are generally where the intelligence lies, and that the network itself generally leaves the management and operation of communication to the end users. In 2013 the software company MetroTech Net, Inc. (MTN) coined the term Dumb Wave which is the modern application of the Dumb Pipe concept to the ubiquitous wireless network. If wireless carriers do not provide unique and value added services, they will be relegated to the dumb pipe category where they can’t charge a premium or retain customers.

End-to-end principle

The end-to-end principle is a principle of network design, first laid out explicitly in the 1981 conference paper End-to-end arguments in system design by Jerome H. Saltzer, David P. Reed, and David D. Clark. The principle states that, whenever possible, communications protocol operations should be defined to occur at the end-points of a communications system, or as close as possible to the resource being controlled. According to the end-to-end principle, protocol features are only justified in the lower layers of a system if they are a performance optimization, hence, TCP retransmission for reliability is still justified, but efforts to improve TCP reliability should stop after peak performance has been reached. They argued that reliable systems tend to require end-to-end processing to operate correctly, in addition to any processing in the intermediate system. They pointed out that most features in the lowest level of a communications system have costs for all higher-layer clients, even if those clients do not need the features, and are redundant if the clients have to re-implement the features on an end-to-end basis. This leads to the model of a minimal dumb network with smart terminals, a completely different model from the previous paradigm of the smart network with dumb terminals. Because the end-to-end principle is one of the central design principles of the Internet, and because the practical means for implementing data discrimination violate the end-to-end principle, the principle often enters discussions about net neutrality. The end-to-end principle is closely related, and sometimes seen as a direct precursor to the principle of net neutrality.[26]

Traffic shaping

Traffic shaping is the control of computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth by delaying packets that meet certain criteria.[27] More specifically, traffic shaping is any action on a set of packets (often called a stream or a flow) which imposes additional delay on those packets such that they conform to some predetermined constraint (a contract or traffic profile).[28] Traffic shaping provides a means to control the volume of traffic being sent into a network in a specified period (bandwidth throttling), or the maximum rate at which the traffic is sent (rate limiting), or more complex criteria such as GCRA.

Over-provisioning

If the core of a network has more bandwidth than is permitted to enter at the edges, then good QoS can be obtained without policing. For example the telephone network employs admission control to limit user demand on the network core by refusing to create a circuit for the requested connection. Over-provisioning is a form of statistical multiplexing that makes liberal estimates of peak user demand. Over-provisioning is used in private networks such as WebEx and the Internet 2 Abilene Network, an American university network. David Isenberg believes that continued over-provisioning will always provide more capacity for less expense than QoS and deep packet inspection technologies.[29][30]

By issue

Discrimination by protocol

On 1 August 2008, the FCC formally voted 3-to-2 to uphold a complaint against Comcast, the largest cable company in the United States, ruling that it had illegally inhibited users of its high-speed Internet service from using file-sharing software. FCC chairman Kevin J. Martin said that the order was meant to set a precedent that Internet providers, and indeed all communications companies, could not prevent customers from using their networks the way they see fit unless there is a good reason. In an interview, Martin said, “We are preserving the open character of the Internet”. The legal complaint against Comcast related to BitTorrent, a transfer protocol that is especially apt at distributing large files such as video, music, and software on the Internet.[31] Comcast admitted no wrongdoing[32] in its proposed settlement of up to US$16 dollars per share in December 2009.[33]

Discrimination by IP address

During the early decades of the Internet, creating a non-neutral Internet was technically infeasible.[34] Originally developed to filter malware, the Internet security company NetScreen Technologies released network firewalls in 2003 with so called deep packet inspection. Deep inspection helped make real-time discrimination between different kinds of data possible,[35] and is often used for internet censorship.

In a practice called zero-rating, companies will reimburse data use from certain addresses, favoring use of those services. Examples include Facebook Zero[36] and Google Free Zone, and are especially common in the developing world.[37]

Sometimes ISPs will charge some companies, but not others, for the traffic they cause on the ISP’s network. French telecoms operator Orange, complaining that traffic from YouTube and other Google sites consists of roughly 50% of total traffic on the Orange network, reached a deal with Google, in which they charge Google for the traffic incurred on the Orange network.[38] Some also thought that Orange’s rival ISP Free throttled YouTube traffic. However, an investigation done by the French telecommunications regulatory body revealed that the network was simply congested during peak hours.[39]

Favoring private networks

Favoring communications sent over the private networks run by individual organizations over information sent over the general Internet Protocol. Examples include Comcast’s deal with Xbox.[40]

Peering discrimination

There is some disagreement about whether peering is a net neutrality issue.[41]

In the first quarter of 2014, streaming website Netflix reached an arrangement with ISP Comcast to improve the quality of its service to Netflix clients.[42] This arrangement was made in response to increasingly slow connection speeds through Comcast over the course of the 2013, where average speeds dropped by over 25% of their values a year before to an all time low. After the deal was struck in January 2014, the Netflix speed index recorded a 66% increase in connection.

Netflix agreed to a similar deal with Verizon in 2014 after Verizon DSL customers connection speed dropped to less than 1 Mbit/s early in the year. Netflix spoke out against this deal with a controversial statement delivered to all Verizon customers experiencing low connection speeds using the Netflix client.[43] This sparked an internal debate between the two companies that led to Verizon obtaining a cease and desist order on June 5, 2014 that forced Netflix to stop displaying this message.

Legal aspects

Legal enforcement of net neutrality principles takes a variety of forms, from provisions that outlaw anti-competitive blocking and throttling of Internet services, all the way to legal enforcement that prevents companies from subsidizing Internet use on particular sites.

Arguments for net neutrality

Proponents of net neutrality include consumer advocates, human rights organizations such as Article 19,[44] online companies and some technology companies.[45]Many major Internet application companies are advocates of neutrality. Yahoo!, Vonage,[46]eBay, Amazon,[47]IAC/InterActiveCorp. Microsoft, along with many other companies, have also taken a stance in support of neutrality regulation.[48]Cogent Communications, an international Internet service provider, has made an announcement in favor of certain net neutrality policies.[49] In 2008, Google published a statement speaking out against letting broadband providers abuse their market power to affect access to competing applications or content. They further equated the situation to that of the telephony market, where telephone companies are not allowed to control who their customers call or what those customers are allowed to say.[4] However, Google’s support of net neutrality has recently been called into question.[50]

Control of data

Supporters of network neutrality want to designate cable companies as common carriers, which would require them to allow Internet service providers (ISPs) free access to cable lines, the model used for dial-up Internet. They want to ensure that cable companies cannot screen, interrupt or filter Internet content without court order.[61] Common carrier status would give the FCC the power to enforce net neutrality rules.[62]

SaveTheInternet.com accuses cable and telecommunications companies of wanting the role of gatekeepers, being able to control which websites load quickly, load slowly, or don’t load at all. According to SaveTheInternet.com these companies want to charge content providers who require guaranteed speedy data delivery…to create advantages for their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video services – and slowing access or blocking access to those of competitors.[63]Vinton Cerf, a co-inventor of the Internet Protocol and current vice president of Google argues that the Internet was designed without any authorities controlling access to new content or new services.[64] He concludes that the principles responsible for making the Internet such a success would be fundamentally undermined were broadband carriers given the ability to affect what people see and do online.[52]

Digital rights and freedoms

Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney argue that net neutrality ensures that the Internet remains a free and open technology, fostering democratic communication. Lessig and McChesney go on to argue that the monopolization of the Internet would stifle the diversity of independent news sources and the generation of innovative and novel web content.[6]

User intolerance for slow-loading sites

Users with faster Internet connectivity (e.g., fiber) abandon a slow-loading video at a faster rate than users with slower Internet connectivity (e.g., cable or mobile).[65] A “fast lane” in the Internet can irrevocably decrease the user’s tolerance to the relative slowness of the “slow lane”.

Proponents of net neutrality invoke the human psychological process of adaptation where when people get used to something better, they would not ever want to go back to something worse. In the context of the Internet, the proponents argue that a user who gets used to the “fast lane” on the Internet would find the “slow lane” intolerable in comparison, greatly disadvantaging any provider who is unable to pay for the “fast lane”. Video providers Netflix[66] and Vimeo[67] in their comments to FCC in favor of net neutrality use the research[65] of S.S. Krishnan and Ramesh Sitaraman that provides the first quantitative evidence of adaptation to speed among online video users. Their research studied the patience level of millions of Internet video users who waited for a slow-loading video to start playing. Users who had a faster Internet connectivity, such as fiber-to-the-home, demonstrated less patience and abandoned their videos sooner than similar users with slower Internet connectivity. The results demonstrate how users can get used to faster Internet connectivity, leading to higher expectation of Internet speed, and lower tolerance for any delay that occurs. Author Nicholas Carr[68] and other social commentators[69][70] have written about the habituation phenomenon by stating that a faster flow of information on the Internet can make people less patient.

Competition and innovation

Net neutrality advocates argue that allowing cable companies the right to demand a toll to guarantee quality or premium delivery would create an exploitative business model based on the ISPs position as gatekeepers.[71] Advocates warn that by charging websites for access, network owners may be able to block competitor Web sites and services, as well as refuse access to those unable to pay.[6] According to Tim Wu, cable companies plan to reserve bandwidth for their own television services, and charge companies a toll for priority service.[72]

Proponents of net neutrality argue that allowing for preferential treatment of Internet traffic, or tiered service, would put newer online companies at a disadvantage and slow innovation in online services.[45]Tim Wu argues that, without network neutrality, the Internet will undergo a transformation from a market ruled by innovation to one ruled by deal-making.[72]SaveTheInternet.com argues that net neutrality puts everyone on equal terms, which helps drive innovation. They claim it is a preservation of the way the internet has always operated, where the quality of websites and services determined whether they succeeded or failed, rather than deals with ISPs.[63]Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney argue that eliminating net neutrality would lead to the Internet resembling the world of cable TV, so that access to and distribution of content would be managed by a handful of massive companies. These companies would then control what is seen as well as how much it costs to see it. Speedy and secure Internet use for such industries as health care, finance, retailing, and gambling could be subject to large fees charged by these companies. They further explain that a majority of the great innovators in the history of the Internet started with little capital in their garages, inspired by great ideas. This was possible because the protections of net neutrality ensured limited control by owners of the networks, maximal competition in this space, and permitted innovators from outside access to the network. Internet content was guaranteed a free and highly competitive space by the existence of net neutrality.[6]

Preserving Internet standards

Network neutrality advocates have sponsored legislation claiming that authorizing incumbent network providers to override transport and application layer separation on the Internet would signal the decline of fundamental Internet standards and international consensus authority. Further, the legislation asserts that bit-shaping the transport of application data will undermine the transport layer’s designed flexibility.[73]

Preventing pseudo-services

Alok Bhardwaj argues that any violations to network neutrality, realistically speaking, will not involve genuine investment but rather payoffs for unnecessary and dubious services. He believes that it is unlikely that new investment will be made to lay special networks for particular websites to reach end-users faster. Rather, he believes that non-net neutrality will involve leveraging quality of service to extract remuneration from websites that want to avoid being slowed down.[74]

End-to-end principle

Some advocates say network neutrality is needed in order to maintain the end-to-end principle. According to Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney, all content must be treated the same and must move at the same speed in order for net neutrality to be true. They say that it is this simple but brilliant end-to-end aspect that has allowed the Internet to act as a powerful force for economic and social good.[6] Under this principle, a neutral network is a dumb network, merely passing packets regardless of the applications they support. This point of view was expressed by David S. Isenberg in his paper, “The Rise of the Stupid Network”. He states that the vision of an intelligent network is being replaced by a new network philosophy and architecture in which the network is designed for always-on use, not intermittence and scarcity. Rather than intelligence being designed into the network itself, the intelligence would be pushed out to the end-user’s device; and the network would be designed simply to deliver bits without fancy network routing or smart number translation. The data would be in control, telling the network where it should be sent. End-user devices would then be allowed to behave flexibly, as bits would essentially be free and there would be no assumption that the data is of a single data rate or data type.[75]

Contrary to this idea, the research paper titled End-to-end arguments in system design by Saltzer, Reed, and Clark[76] argues that network intelligence doesn’t relieve end systems of the requirement to check inbound data for errors and to rate-limit the sender, nor for a wholesale removal of intelligence from the network core.

A number of these opponents created a website called Hands Off The Internet[78] (which no longer exists) to promote their arguments against net neutrality. Principal financial support for the website came from AT&T, and members included technology firms and pro-market advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste.[79][80][81][82]

Network neutrality regulations are opposed by Internet engineers such as professor David Farber[83] and TCP inventor and Qualcomm Director[84]Bob Kahn.[11]Robert Pepper is senior managing director, global advanced technology policy, at Cisco Systems, and is the former FCC chief of policy development. He says: “The supporters of net neutrality regulation believe that more rules are necessary. In their view, without greater regulation, service providers might parcel out bandwidth or services, creating a bifurcated world in which the wealthy enjoy first-class Internet access, while everyone else is left with slow connections and degraded content. That scenario, however, is a false paradigm. Such an all-or-nothing world doesn’t exist today, nor will it exist in the future. Without additional regulation, service providers are likely to continue doing what they are doing. They will continue to offer a variety of broadband service plans at a variety of price points to suit every type of consumer”.[85]Bob Kahn, another computer scientist and Director at Qualcomm,[84] has said net neutrality is a slogan that would freeze innovation in the core of the Internet.[11]

Farber has written and spoken strongly in favor of continued research and development on core Internet protocols. He joined academic colleagues Michael Katz,Christopher Yoo, and Gerald Faulhaber in an op-ed for the Washington Post strongly critical of network neutrality, essentially stating that while the Internet is in need of remodeling, congressional action aimed at protecting the best parts of the current Internet could interfere with efforts to build a replacement.[86]

Financing infrastructure improvements

Some opponents of net neutrality argue that prioritization of bandwidth is necessary for future innovation on the Internet.[77] Telecommunications providers such as telephone and cable companies, and some technology companies that supply networking gear, argue telecom providers should have the ability to provide preferential treatment in the form of tiered services, for example by giving online companies willing to pay the ability to transfer their data packets faster than other Internet traffic. The added revenue from such services could be used to pay for the building of increased broadband access to more consumers.[45]

Conversely, opponents say that net neutrality regulation would make it more difficult for Internet service providers (ISPs) and other network operators to recoup their investments in broadband networks.[87] John Thorne, senior vice president and deputy general counsel of Verizon, a broadband and telecommunications company, has argued that they will have no incentive to make large investments to develop advanced fibre-optic networks if they are prohibited from charging higher preferred access fees to companies that wish to take advantage of the expanded capabilities of such networks. Thorne and other ISPs have accused Google and Skype of freeloading or free riding for using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.[77][88][89]

Counterweight to server-side non-neutrality

Those in favor of forms of non-neutral tiered Internet access argue that the Internet is already not a level playing field: large companies achieve a performance advantage over smaller competitors by replicating servers and buying high-bandwidth services. Should prices drop for lower levels of access, or access to only certain protocols, for instance, a change of this type would make Internet usage more neutral, with respect to the needs of those individuals and corporations specifically seeking differentiated tiers of service. Network expert[citation needed] Richard Bennett has written, “A richly funded Web site, which delivers data faster than its competitors to the front porches of the Internet service providers, wants it delivered the rest of the way on an equal basis. This system, which Google calls broadband neutrality, actually preserves a more fundamental inequality.”[90]

Tim Wu, though a proponent of network neutrality, claims that the current Internet is not neutral, because its implementation of best effort generally favors file transfer and other non-time sensitive traffic over real-time communications.[91]

Prevent overuse of bandwidth

Since the early 1990s, Internet traffic has increased steadily. The arrival of picture-rich websites and MP3s led to a sharp increase in the mid-1990s followed by a subsequent sharp increase since 2003 as video streaming and Peer-to-peer file sharing became more common.[92][93] In reaction to companies including YouTube, as well as smaller companies starting to offer free video content, using substantial amounts of bandwidth, at least one Internet service provider (ISP), SBC Communications (now AT&T Inc.), has suggested that it should have the right to charge these companies for making their content available over the provider’s network.[94]

Bret Swanson of the Wall Street Journal wrote in 2007 that the popular websites of that time, including YouTube, MySpace, and blogs, were put at risk by net neutrality. He noted that, at the time, YouTube streamed as much data in three months as the world’s radio, cable and broadcast television channels did in one year, 75 petabytes. He argued that networks were not remotely prepared to handle the amount of data required to run these sites. He also argued that net neutrality would prevent broadband networks from being built, which would limit available bandwidth and thus endanger innovation.[95]

One example of these concerns was the series of tubes analogy, which was presented by US senator Ted Stevens on the floor of the US senate in 2006.

Related issues

Data discrimination

Tim Wu, though a proponent of network neutrality, claims that the current Internet is not neutral as its implementation of best effort generally favors file transfer and other non-time-sensitive traffic over real-time communications.[96] Generally, a network which blocks some nodes or services for the customers of the network would normally be expected to be less useful to the customers than one that did not. Therefore, for a network to remain significantly non-neutral requires either that the customers not be concerned about the particular non-neutralities or the customers not have any meaningful choice of providers, otherwise they would presumably switch to another provider with fewer restrictions.[citation needed]

While the network neutrality debate continues, network providers often enter into peering arrangements among themselves. These agreements often stipulate how certain information flows should be treated. In addition, network providers often implement various policies such as blocking of port 25 to prevent insecure systems from serving as spam relays, or other ports commonly used by decentralized music search applications implementing peer-to-peer networking models. They also present terms of service that often include rules about the use of certain applications as part of their contracts with users.[citation needed]

Most consumer Internet providers implement policies like these. The MIT Mantid Port Blocking Measurement Project is a measurement effort to characterize Internet port blocking and potentially discriminatory practices. However, the effect of peering arrangements among network providers are only local to the peers that enter into the arrangements, and cannot affect traffic flow outside their scope.[citation needed]

Jon Peha from Carnegie Mellon University believes it is important to create policies that protect users from harmful traffic discrimination, while allowing beneficial discrimination. Peha discusses the technologies that enable traffic discrimination, examples of different types of discrimination, and potential impacts of regulation.[97]

Quality of service

Internet routers forward packets according to the diverse peering and transport agreements that exist between network operators. Many networks using Internet protocols now employ quality of service (QoS), and Network Service Providers frequently enter into Service Level Agreements with each other embracing some sort of QoS.

There is no single, uniform method of interconnecting networks using IP, and not all networks that use IP are part of the Internet. IPTV networks are isolated from the Internet, and are therefore not covered by network neutrality agreements.

The IP datagram includes a 3-bit wide Precedence field and a larger DiffServ Code Point that are used to request a level of service, consistent with the notion that protocols in a layered architecture offer services through Service Access Points. This field is sometimes ignored, especially if it requests a level of service outside the originating network’s contract with the receiving network. It is commonly used in private networks, especially those including Wi-Fi networks where priority is enforced. While there are several ways of communicating service levels across Internet connections, such as SIP, RSVP, IEEE 802.11e, and MPLS, the most common scheme combines SIP and DSCP. Router manufacturers now sell routers that have logic enabling them to route traffic for various Classes of Service at “wire-speed”.

With the emergence of multimedia, VoIP, IPTV, and other applications that benefit from low latency, various attempts to address the inability of some private networks to limit latency have arisen, including the proposition of offering tiered service levels that would shape Internet transmissions at the network layer based on application type. These efforts are ongoing, and are starting to yield results as wholesale Internet transport providers begin to amend service agreements to include service levels.[98]

Advocates of net neutrality have proposed several methods to implement a net neutral Internet that includes a notion of quality-of-service:

An approach offered by Tim Berners-Lee allows discrimination between different tiers, while enforcing strict neutrality of data sent at each tier: “If I pay to connect to the Net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the net, with that quality and quantity of service”.[3] “[We] each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me.”[99]

United States lawmakers have introduced bills that would now allow quality of service discrimination for certain services as long as no special fee is charged for higher-quality service.[100]

Alok Bhardwaj has argued that net neutrality preservation through legislation is consistent with implementing quality of service protocols. He argues legislation should ban the charging of fees for any quality of service, which would both allow networks to implement quality of service as well as remove any incentive to abuse net neutrality ideas. He argues that since implementing quality of service doesn’t require any additional costs versus a non-QoS network, there’s no reason implementing quality of service should entail any additional fees.[74] However, the core network hardware needed (with large number of queues, etc.) and the cost of designing and maintaining a QoS network are both much higher than for a non-QoS network.[citation needed]

Pricing models

Broadband Internet access has most often been sold to users based on Excess Information Rate or maximum available bandwidth. If Internet service providers(ISPs) can provide varying levels of service to websites at various prices, this may be a way to manage the costs of unused capacity by selling surplus bandwidth (or “leverage price discrimination to recoup costs of ‘consumer surplus‘”). However, purchasers of connectivity on the basis of Committed Information Rate or guaranteed bandwidth capacity must expect the capacity they purchase in order to meet their communications requirements.

Various studies have sought to provide network providers the necessary formulas for adequately pricing such a tiered service for their customer base. But while network neutrality is primarily focused on protocol based provisioning, most of the pricing models are based on bandwidth restrictions.[101]

Privacy concerns

This article or section may be written in a style that is too abstract to be readily understandable by general audiences.Please improve it by defining technical terminology, and by adding examples. (February 2015)

Some opponents of net neutrality legislation point to concerns of privacy rights that could come about as a result, how those infringements of privacy can be exploited. While some believe it is hyperbole to suggest that ISPs will just transparently monitor transmitted content, or that ISPs will have to alter their content, there is the concern that ISPs may have profit motives to analyze what their subscribers are viewing, and be able to use such information to their financial advantage. For example, an ISP may be able to essentially replicate the “targeting” that has already been employed by companies like Google. To critics such as David Clark, a senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the proper question is “who has the right to observe everything you do”?[102]

Story 1: Illegal Aliens Who Get Work Permits aka Employment Authorization Documents, Social Security Numbers and State Drivers Licenses Will Register to Vote and Vote Illegally in Elections — Democratic and Republican Parties Betray Their Oath of Office and American People — The Two Party Tyranny — Illegal Aliens Steal American Jobs and Taxes and Cancels Out American Citizens’ Votes — 30-50 Million Illegal Aliens In The United States! — Videos

Kris Kobach sounds off on allowing non-citizens to vote

Obama Lies 22 Times Before Bypassing Congress on Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

Kris Kobach sounds off on allowing non-citizens to vote

Immigration Battle Analyzed by Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham – Immigration Is A Huge Winner For GOP In 2016 – If They Avoid Jeb Bush Trap

YOU NEED TO KNOW: Obama Executive Action Immigration Reform

By Stephen Dinan

President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty will make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.

While stressing that it remains illegal for noncitizens to vote, secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas said they won’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register anyway, ignoring stiff penalties to fill out the registration forms that are easily available at shopping malls, motor vehicle bureaus and in curbside registration drives.

Anyone registering to vote attests that he or she is a citizen, but Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said mass registration drives often aren’t able to give due attention to that part, and so illegal immigrants will still get through.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach said even some motor vehicle bureau workers automatically ask customers if they want to register to vote, which some noncitizens in the past have cited as their reason for breaking the law to register.

“The president’s executive order gives immigrants the right to stay — immigrants who have been here for years, immigrants who have been working hard and whose labor we have needed,” Ms. Norton said. “The Republicans may want to go down in history as the party who tried once again 100 years later to nullify the right to vote. Well, I am here to say they shall not succeed.”

Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Democrat, said he doubted illegal immigrants would risk running afoul of the law — which could get them deported — just to be an insignificant part of an election.

The hearing was the latest GOP effort to dent Mr. Obama’s executive action, announced in November, which grants tentative legal status and work permits to as many as 4 million illegal immigrant parents whose children are either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. The president also expanded a 2012 policy for so-called Dreamers, or illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, granting them tentative legal status and work permits as well.

Republicans say there are a host of unintended consequences, including the chances of illegal voting, a perverse incentive created by Obamacare that would make newly legalized workers more attractive to some businesses than American workers and complications with the tax code.

The newly legalized workers can apply for back refunds from the IRS even for years when they didn’t file their taxes, agency Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress on Wednesday.

Mr. Koskinen said the White House never spoke with him about potential consequences before Mr. Obama announced his policy changes. The secretaries of state who testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday said they too never heard from Mr. Obama ahead of time.

Mr. Husted has written the Obama administration asking for help in identifying the name and date of birth of all noncitizens who get Social Security numbers, which he said would allow states to go back and clear illegally registered voters from their rolls.

He said the administration hasn’t responded.

“Why I wrote the letter is I want to comply with federal law,” he said.

Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state, said he believed the laws already on the books are good enough to stop any voting mischief in his state, and he doubted illegal immigrants had incentive or intent to try to interfere with U.S. elections.

“My experience is they don’t come here to vote, and they don’t come here to drive. They come here for a better life,” he said.

Mr. Kobach countered with a story about a legal permanent resident who had not yet become a citizen but who registered and voted nonetheless, and who said she wanted to support candidates who would help her earn citizenship faster.

Only four states require proof of citizenship before someone registers to vote, Mr. Kobach said. And even in those states, the federal government offers voter registration cards that don’t require proof of citizenship, giving determined illegal immigrants a way to circumvent checks.

DHS creates path to citizenship for Dreamers: report

The Obama administration quietly told Congress this week that its deportation amnesty programs will, in fact, include a pathway to citizenship, according to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, who said that breaks a promise President Obama made to the country when he announced the program.

In a conference call with congressional staffers, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it would allow so-called Dreamers applying for the deportation amnesty, known as DACA or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, to also apply for “advance parole,” which is a separate program that also serves as a shortcut to a green card, which is the key step on the path to citizenship.

In a letter Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Mr. Goodlatte demanded he put an end to the new program, which could open an avenue for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to bypass the regular rules and gain citizenship, which carries voting rights and eligibility for taxpayer-funded benefits.

“Under the expanded program, DACA requestors will now be able to file applications for advance parole at the same time they file their DACA application,” Mr. Goodlatte wrote. “Such a process encourages advance parole applications and thus encourages DACA to be used as a path to U.S. citizenship.”

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did USCIS, the agency that will actually process the applications.

Advance parole is permission for illegal immigrants to leave the country and return. Under current rules, they can request regular parole upon their return, which eases their path to getting a green card. Green card holders are entitled to apply for citizenship after five years.

Current Dreamers who have applied for advance parole had an approval rate of 88 percent, which suggests a large number of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants eligible for the new program will likely also be put on a path to citizenship.

Mr. Goodlatte said immigration lawyers are already well aware of the advance parole citizenship pathway loophole, as judging by their online notices advertising their ability to help illegal immigrants apply.

Mr. Obama announced the program for Dreamers in June 2012, and began taking applications in August of that year. More than 600,000 persons who were brought to the U.S. as children have been approved.

In November, the president announced he would expand the program to lift age limits, and create a new program for illegal immigrant parents whose children are already U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. That program could apply to as many as 3.85 million illegal immigrants, the administrationsays — though it says only about half of those will be apply.

It is unclear whether the adults would also be given an immediate change to apply for advance parole.

Mr. Obama took unilateral action to announce the programs, drawing the ire of congressional Republicans who said he overstepped his powers and only Congress can set immigration policy.

The president rejected that, saying while he could halt most deportations by setting priorities, he could not create a pathway to citizenship. Mr. Goodlatte, in his new letter, said the administration appears to have found a way to do that.

USCIS will begin taking applications for the new deportation amnesties for Dreamers and advance parole on Feb. 18.

Congressional Republicans are currently fighting to try to halt the expanded amnesties, and a federal judge in Texas is considering a lawsuit by more than two dozen states who have sued to stop the new policy. A ruling on that case is expected at any moment.

Obama Amnesty Paves Way for Illegals to Vote, Officials Say

By Drew MacKenzie

The secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas testified that illegal immigrants can easily fill out registration forms available from shopping malls and motor vehicle bureaus, even though it is illegal for them to vote and they face penalties for breaking the law.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said that motor vehicle bureau workers often ask customers if they want to register to vote, which noncitizens have blamed in the past for their illegal votes. “It’s a guarantee it will happen,” said Kobach.

But Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting member of Congress, claimed that Obama’s unilateral action does not affect federal or state laws on voter registration.

“The president’s executive order gives immigrants the right to stay — immigrants who have been here for years, immigrants who have been working hard and whose labor we have needed,” Norton said.

“The Republicans may want to go down in history as the party who tried once again 100 years later to nullify the right to vote. Well, I am here to say they shall not succeed.”

And Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, scoffed at the suggestion that illegal immigrants would take the risk of being deported just for the chance to cast a ballot.

Thursday’s hearing, before the House Oversight Committee, is part of an attempt by the GOP to hold up Obama’s executive action temporarily delaying deportations and giving work permits to millions of illegal immigrants who have children born legally in the U.S., the Times reported.

In another recent unilateral move, Obama granted temporary legal status to so-called Dreamers, those who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state, also doubted illegal immigrants would endanger their stay in the U.S. to become an insignificant part of American elections.

Rand Paul vs. Charles Krauthammer on Iran

Charles Krauthammer: Rand Paul “has a lot of political genius”

Rand Paul says He Would Give a Legalized Status to Illegal Immigrants

RAND PAUL Explains LIBERTARIANISM

Why is Rand Paul the right choice for America? Rand Paul 2016.

Rand Paul: Voters ready for Libertarian Republican in 2016

Libertarians need to get over Rand Paul

Ray Charles – Hit The Road Jack

Don McLean – American Pie

“American Pie”

[Intro]
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they’d be happy for a whileBut February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more stepI can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died[Chorus]
So bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
Singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”[Verse 1]
Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Now do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?Well, I know that you’re in love with him
‘Cause I saw you dancin’ in the gym
You both kicked off your shoes
Man, I dig those rhythm and bluesI was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died[Chorus]
I started singin’ bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
Singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”[Verse 2]
Now for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rollin’ stone
But that’s not how it used to be
When the jester sang for the king and queen
In a coat he borrowed from James Dean
And a voice that came from you and meOh, and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returnedAnd while Lenin read a book on Marx
The quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died[Chorus]
We were singin’ bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
Singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”[Verse 3]
Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter
Eight miles high and falling fast
It landed foul on the grass
The players tried for a forward pass
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast

Now the halftime air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance

‘Cause the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?

[Chorus]
We started singin’ bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
And singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”

[Verse 4]
Oh, and there we were all in one place
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devil’s only friend

Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan’s spell

And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died

He was singin’ bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
And singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”

[Outro]
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play

And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died

And they were singin’ bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
Singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”

[Chorus]
They were singin’ bye-bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
And singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die”

Mitt Romney will NOT run for President again: Former Massachusetts governor says he will not mount a third campaign

‘I’m not organizing a PAC or taking donations; I’m not hiring a campaign team,’ he told donors during a Friday morning conference call

Jeb Bush boxed him out of access to big donors by getting in the race early with an exploratory committee

Romney and his wife had told reporters time and time again that he wasn’t running in 2016 but few believed them

CNN aired part of the private call live as Romney thanked his inner circle and said he thought another leader would have the best chance

Romney will have dinner with Chris Christie on Friday night, raising new eyebrows about the aftermath of his bowing out

White House paid him a backhanded compliment for messages about poverty, saying Republicans had used it as ‘a talking point’

By DAVID MARTOSKO, US POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Mitt Romney, who stumbled his way to a lackluster finish in the 2012 presidential election as the Republican nominee, will not make a third run at the political world’s ultimate prize.

The former Massachusetts governor told top donors Friday morning that ‘after putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the Party the opportunity to become our next nominee.’

‘I’ve been asked, and will certainly be asked again,’ he said, ‘if there are any circumstances whatsoever that might develop that could change my mind. That seems unlikely.’

‘Accordingly, I’m not organizing a PAC or taking donations; I’m not hiring a campaign team.’

Former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke at Mississippi State University on Thursday as he prepared to announce that he’ll be sitting out the 2016 presidential race

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (left) campaigned with Romney in 2012, but he’s the main beneficiary of Mitt’s decidion to drop out of the next race early

That giant noise you hear this morning in suburban New York is the sound of opposition-research binders being shredded in the offices of Hillary Clinton, who was looking forward to taking on Romney in 2016

Mitt Romney will NOT run for president in 2016

Daily Mail Online obtained Romney’s prepared remarks from a consultant close to the former governor.

The White House reacted Friday by paying him a backhanded compliment.

Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said at the beginning of his press briefing that he hadn’t spoken to the president about Romney’ss decision, but offered his own observations.

Romney, he said, is ‘a man of great faith and a man who has tremendous loyalty and commitment to his country’ and ‘is worthy of our respect.’

‘He did say in recent days that he hoped that we can have a more robust debate in this country about what we could do to put in place policies that benefit middle class families,’ Earnest noted, before dismissing Republicans whom he said ‘have used the middle class as a talking point.’

JEB BUSH’S FACEBOOK FAREWELL TO MITT

‘Mitt Romney has been a leader in our party for many years. There are few people who have worked harder to elect Republicans across the country than he has. Though I’m sure today’s decision was not easy, I know that Mitt Romney will never stop advocating for renewing America’s promise through upward mobility, encouraging free enterprise and strengthening our national defense.

‘Mitt is a patriot and I join many in hoping his days of serving our nation and our party are not over. I look forward to working with him to ensure all Americans have a chance to rise up.

‘Columba and I wish Mitt, Ann and their entire family the very best.’

‘We are seeing more rhetoric from Republicans indicating what was a previously unstated concern for people who aren’t at the top,’ Earnest said.

‘All of a sudden … some Republicans seem to be changing their tune.’

Two weeks ago Earnest seemed to mock reports that Romney would be seeking the White House in 2016, addressing ‘reports that Governor Romney is considering gettng the band back together again.’

Obama drew jeers from Democratic lawmakers on Thursday night in Philadelphia when he said that ‘a former presidential candidate on the other side’ was ‘suddenly … just deeply concerned about poverty.’

Earnest dismissed the nation’s momentary fascination with a third Romney run.

‘I’m confident that Governor Romney will be someone whose endorsement will be, um, sought,’ he said Friday.

He also said Obama is ‘not disappointed’ that Romney won’t be part of the 2016 race.

Romney’s decision to end his much-discusion flirtation with another White House run comes just hours after a Fox News poll put Romney at the top of the pack, leading former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and others by a considerable margin

His 21 per cent support among Republican voters was nearly double that of a second-place cluster that included Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, with 11 per cent each, and Bush, with 10 per cent.

Romney’s infamous ‘47%’ comment and his reaction

Bush posted a statement on Facebook shortly after Romney made his announcement.

‘Though I’m sure today’s decision was not easy, I know that Mitt Romney will never stop advocating for renewing America’s promise through upward mobility, encouraging free enterprise and strengthening our national defense,’ he wrote.

‘Mitt is a patriot and I join many in hoping his days of serving our nation and our party are not over. I look forward to working with him to ensure all Americans have a chance to rise up.’

Jeb poached a key member of Romney’s poltical organization on Thursday.

David Kochel, an Iowa-based consultant who worked on ROmney’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, went to work for Right to Rise, Bush’s new political action committee.

Romney’s first shot at the presidency came in 2008, when he lost the GOP nomination to Arizona Sen. John McCain.

He risked losing a third time to any of nearly two dozen other potential candidates, although Bush’s entry into the picture last month has caused the most concern – at least from a fundraising perspective.

‘Mitt Romney 3.0 was worried about Jeb Bush 1.0 freezing him out of the big money,’ a GOP campaign consultant in the early primary state of New Hampshire warned Daily Mail Online on Friday morning. ‘That’s why he’s sitting out.’

‘Let’s face it: Jeb has a month-long head start. Mitt was already running out of billionaires who haden’t already made commitments.’

+5

SIX DAYS AGO: Broadcaster Larry King tweeted on Jan. 24 that Romney told him a decision would be forthcoming within two weeks

He seemed to recognize that reality on Friday, but framed his decision in terms of what some in the party had begun to call ‘Romney fatigue.’

‘I feel that it is critical that America elect a conservative leader to become our next president,’ he said. ‘You know that I have wanted to be that president.’

‘But I do not want to make it more difficult for someone else to emerge who may have a better chance of becoming that president.’

At the same time, Romney clung to the idea that his financing and organization would have been adequate to the task.

‘Our finance calls made it clear we would have enough funding to be more than competitive and with few exceptions our field political leadership is ready and enthusiastic about a new race.,’ he told supporters.

‘The reaction of Republican voters across the country was both surprising and heartening.’

CNN made waves Friday morning by airing part of the Romney conference call, which was a private conversation and not meant for the press.

Romney would have faced considerable challenges if he had run.

In addition to his complaint in 2012 that ’47 per cent’ of Americans who depend on government benefits to make ends meet would never vote for him, he has said over and over in the past two years that he’s no longer interested in the White House.

WINNER? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could benefit from Romney’s disappearance in presidential polls as much of his support among self-described ‘moderates’ had swung to Romney – and Romney himself will dine with Christie on Friday night

‘In February 2014, he said on Meet the Press: ‘You know, I’m not Ronald Reagan. And I’m not running for president. We’ve got some very good people who are considering the race. And I’m looking forward to supporting someone who I think will have the best shot of defeating whoever it is the Democrats put up.’

In June 2014 he told another NBC News interviewer that ‘I’m not running for president.’

‘I’m not running, I’m not planning on running, and I’ve got nothing new on that story,’ he told Bloomberg in October.

Ann Romney, the once upon a time would-be first lady, piled on too.

‘Done, completely,’ she said then. ‘Not only Mitt and I are done, but the kids are done. Done. Done. Done.’

Romney jumped back into the presidential discussion on Jan. 10, when he told a small group of former donors in New York that he was eyeing another White House run.

But it’s over for him as of Friday morning, as it became apparent that many of his past supporters and major fundraisers had defected to the Bush camp.

One told the Associated Press this week, ‘I have turned the page.’

Several called other candidates and their campaign consultants, pledgign support to presidential hopefuls including Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Christie got a boost from news that he will have dinner with Romney on Friday night.

That could indicate the Utah Republican’s desire to box Jeb Bush out and help a different moderate alternative rise to take his place.

MITT ROMNEY’S PREPARED STATEMENT TO DONORS

‘Let me begin by letting you know who else is on this call, besides Ann and me. There are a large number of people who signed on to be leaders of our 2016 finance effort. In addition, state political leadership from several of the early primary states are on the line. And here in New York City, and on the phone, are people who have been helping me think through how to build a new team, as well as supporters from the past who have all been kind enough to volunteer their time during this deliberation stage. Welcome, and thank you. Your loyalty and friendship, and your desire to see the country with new, competent and conservative leadership warms my heart.

‘After putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the Party the opportunity to become our next nominee.

‘Let me give you some of my thinking. First, I am convinced that with the help of the people on this call, we could win the nomination. Our finance calls made it clear that we would have enough funding to be more than competitive. With few exceptions, our field political leadership is ready and enthusiastic about a new race. And the reaction of Republican voters across the country was both surprising and heartening. I know that early poll numbers move up and down a great deal during a campaign, but we would have no doubt started in a strong position. One poll out just today shows me gaining support and leading the next closest contender by nearly two to one. I also am leading in all of the four early states. So I am convinced that we could win the nomination, but fully realize it would have been difficult test and a hard fight.

‘I also believe with the message of making the world safer, providing opportunity to every American regardless of the neighborhood they live in, and working to break the grip of poverty, I would have the best chance of beating the eventual Democrat nominee, but that is before the other contenders have had the opportunity to take their message to the voters.

‘I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee. In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case.

‘I feel that it is critical that America elect a conservative leader to become our next president. You know that I have wanted to be that president. But I do not want to make it more difficult for someone else to emerge who may have a better chance of becoming that president. You can’t imagine how hard it is for Ann and me to step aside, especially knowing of your support and the support of so many people across the country. But we believe it is for the best of the Party and the nation.

‘I’ve been asked, and will certainly be asked again if there are any circumstances whatsoever that might develop that could change my mind. That seems unlikely. Accordingly, I’m not organizing a PAC or taking donations; I’m not hiring a campaign team.

‘I encourage all of you on this call to stay engaged in the critical process of selecting a Republican nominee for President. Please feel free to sign up on a campaign for a person who you believe may become our best nominee.

‘I believe a Republican winning back the White House is essential for our country, and I will do whatever I can to make that happen.

‘To all my supporters, friends and family who worked both tirelessly and loyally to support my campaigns in the past, I will always be deeply appreciative. What you have already done is a tribute to your patriotism. We are overwhelmed and humbled by your loyalty to us, by your generosity of spirit, and by your friendship. God bless you all.

MAJOR REDUCTIONS IN CARBON EMISSIONS ARE NOT WORTH THE MONEY 4 /14- Intelligence Squared U.S.

Co-Founder of The Weather Channel: GLOBAL WARMING IS A COMPLETE HOAX

Professor Bob Carter on Global Warming Science

Global Warming or a New Ice Age: Documentary Film

Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation. This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles. In contrast to the global cooling conjecture, the current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth has not durably cooled, but undergone global warming throughout the twentieth century.

Concerns about nuclear winter arose in the early 1980s from several reports. Similar speculations have appeared over effects due to catastrophes such as asteroid impacts and massive volcanic eruptions. A prediction that massive oil well fires in Kuwait would cause significant effects on climate was quite incorrect.

The idea of a global cooling as the result of global warming was already proposed in the 1990s. In 2003, the Office of Net Assessment at the United States Department of Defense was commissioned to produce a study on the likely and potential effects of a modern climate change, especially of a shutdown of thermohaline circulation. The study, conducted under ONA head Andrew Marshall, modelled its prospective climate change on the 8.2 kiloyear event, precisely because it was the middle alternative between the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The study caused controversy in the media when it was made public in 2004. However, scientists acknowledge that “abrupt climate change initiated by Greenland ice sheet melting is not a realistic scenario for the 21st century”.

Currently, the concern that cooler temperatures would continue, and perhaps at a faster rate, has been observed to be incorrect by the IPCC. More has to be learned about climate, but the growing records have shown that the cooling concerns of 1975 have not been borne out.

As for the prospects of the end of the current interglacial (again, valid only in the absence of human perturbations): it isn’t true that interglacials have previously only lasted about 10,000 years; and Milankovitch-type calculations indicate that the present interglacial would probably continue for tens of thousands of years naturally. Other estimates (Loutre and Berger, based on orbital calculations) put the unperturbed length of the present interglacial at 50,000 years. Berger (EGU 2005 presentation) believes that the present CO2 perturbation will last long enough to suppress the next glacial cycle entirely.

As the NAS report indicates, scientific knowledge regarding climate change was more uncertain than it is today. At the time that Rasool and Schneider wrote their 1971 paper, climatologists had not yet recognized the significance of greenhouse gases other than water vapor and carbon dioxide, such as methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons. Early in that decade, carbon dioxide was the only widely studied human-influenced greenhouse gas. The attention drawn to atmospheric gases in the 1970s stimulated many discoveries in future decades. As the temperature pattern changed, global cooling was of waning interest by 1979

The Great Global Warming Swindle Full Movie

Milankovitch Cycles

Milankovitch Cycles Precession and Obliquity

Milankovitch Cycles

How Milankovicth cycles can theoretically change Earth’s current orbit and result in cycles of glaciation and warmer periods.

ManBearPig, Climategate and Watermelons: A conversation with author James Delingpole

James Delingpole is a bestselling British author and blogger who helped expose the Climategate scandal back in 2009. Reason.tv caught up with Delingpole in Los Angeles recently to learn more about his entertaining and provocative new book Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors. At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one. In other words, it’s green on the outside and red on the inside. At the end of the day, according to Delingpole, the “watermelons” of the modern environmental movement do not want to save the world. They want to rule it.

George Carlin on Global Warming

Rush Limbaugh Podcast January 26 2015 Full Podcast

Rush On The Passing of Christopher “Kit” Carson

RUSH: We all here at the EIB Network are experiencing a huge void in all of our hearts here today because of a death, one of our staff members, the very first staff member to join me 27 years ago in New York. Christopher Carson, “Kit,” my trusted chief of staff, aide-de-camp, passed away today at 8 a.m. at his home in New Jersey after what really was a four-year battle, really valiant, never-seen-anything-like-it battle with essentially brain cancer.

Barbra Streisand – HD STEREO – Memory – CC for lyrics

“Memory”

Midnight
Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan
Memory, all alone in the moonlight
I can dream of the old days
Life was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
Every street lamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning
Someone mutters and the street lamp sputters
Soon it will be morning
Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life and
I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin
Burnt out ends of smoky days
The stale court smell of morning
A street lamp dies
Another night is over
Another day is dawning
Touch me,
It is so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you’ll touch me,
You’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun…

Cuomo On Blizzard 2015: Subways To Shut Down At 11 P.M., Travel Ban On Local, State Roads

As a potentially historic blizzard swept through the Tri-State Area on Monday night, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the entire New York City subway system and other Metropolitan Transportation Authority transportation would shut down at 11 p.m.

In addition, local, state and city roads would be shut down to all but emergency vehicles.

New estimates indicate that wind speeds will gust up to 70 mph, and thus, the state decided to shut down all MTA and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey facilities.

“Getting the subways and the railroad cars in a safe position is key, so that when the weather does leave, we’re in a position for the system to start back up,” Cuomo said.

The shutdown of the system began rolling into effect at around 5 p.m., and was to be completed by 11 p.m.

“A lot of people think of the subways as being completely underground. In fact, a huge proportion of it, probably about 40 percent, of the subway is above ground and is prone to getting icing and snow,” MTA Spokesman Aaron Donovan told WCBS 880.

“We’re going to be spending the whole night monitoring the conditions throughout our service area, monitoring the area. It really depends on what we see the conditions are but we can’t guarantee there will be service tomorrow morning,” he added.

Travel will also be restricted on all roads – whether interstate, state, county, city or town – in 13 counties from Ulster and Sullivan in the northern suburbs to New York City and Long Island, Cuomo said. Only emergency vehicles would be allowed on the roads, and those caught not complying would face penalties, he said.

“This is a serious situation,” Cuomo said. “If you violate this state order, it’s a possible misdemeanor, with fines up to $300, and that will go into effect at 11 o’clock also,” Cuomo said.

A blizzard warning is in effect for the metropolitan area through midnight Wednesday morning. CBS2’s Lonnie Quinn expects snow to fall at a rate of 2 to 4 inches an hour between late Monday night and midday Tuesday, with winds gusting 40 to 60 mph.

The storm could bury some communities in 4 or more feet of snow. Coastal flooding and erosion is also a major threat.

One forecasting model anticipates a grand total of 34.4 inches of snow falling in New York City. More modest models anticipate 17.1 inches.

Northeast Residents Preparing For ‘Crippling’ Blizzard That Could Dump Up To 2 Feet Of Snow Over 250-Mile Stretch

The Philadelphia-to-Boston corridor of more than 35 million people began shutting down and bundling up Monday against a potentially history-making storm that could unload a paralyzing 1 to 3 feet of snow.

More than 5,000 flights in and out of the Northeast were canceled, and many of them may not take off again until Wednesday. Schools and businesses let out early. And cities mobilized snowplows and salt spreaders to deal with a dangerously windy blast that could instantly make up for what has been a largely snow-free winter in the urban Northeast.

Snow was already falling during the morning commute in several cities, including Philadelphia and New York, with Boston up next in the afternoon. Forecasters said the brunt of the storm would hit Monday evening and into Tuesday.

The Weather Channel reports that 28 million people are under blizzard warnings and an additional 11 million are under winter storm warnings.

All too aware that big snowstorms can make or break politicians, governors and mayors moved quickly to declare emergencies and order the shutdown of highways, streets and mass transit systems to prevent travelers from getting stranded and to enable plows and emergency vehicles to get through.

“You cannot underestimate this storm. It is not a regular storm,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio warned in ordering city streets closed to all but emergency vehicles beginning at 11 p.m. “What you are going to see in a few hours is something that hits very hard and very fast.”

Boston is expected to get 2 to 3 feet, New York 1½ to 2 feet, and Philadelphia more than a foot. The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for a 250-mile swath of the region, meaning heavy, blowing snow and potential whiteout conditions.

In Hartford, Connecticut, Frank Kurzatkowski stopped for gas and said he also filled several five-gallon buckets of water at his home in case the power went out and his well pump failed.

Supermarkets and hardware stores did a brisk trade as light snow fell in New Jersey.

Nicole Coelho, 29, a nanny from Lyndhurst, New Jersey, was preparing to pick up her charges early from school and stocking up on macaroni and cheese, frozen pizzas and milk at a supermarket. She also was ready in case of a power outage.

“I’m going to make sure to charge up my cellphone, and I have a good book I haven’t gotten around to reading yet,” she said.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie issued a state of emergency and asked commuters to stay off the roads.

“From the reports I’ve seen, you’ve all been to the supermarket. I don’t know why the rush on bread, but what the heck,” Christie joked.

About half of all flights out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport were called off Monday, and about 60 percent of flights heading into the airport were scratched. Boston’s Logan Airport said there would be no flights after 7 p.m. Monday.

The storm posed one of the biggest tests yet for Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, who has been in office for less than three weeks. He warned residents to prepare for power outages and roads that are “very hard, if not impossible, to navigate.”

Wind gusts of 75 mph or more were possible for coastal areas of Massachusetts, and up to 50 mph farther inland, forecasters said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency and urged commuters to stay home on Monday, warning that roads could be closed before the evening rush hour, even major highways such as the New York Thruway and the Long Island Expressway.

Similarly, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy ordered a travel ban on his state’s highways, while officials in other states asked residents to avoid going anywhere unless it is necessary.

The Washington area was expecting only a couple of inches of snow. But the House postponed votes scheduled for Monday night because lawmakers were having difficulty flying back to the nation’s capital after the weekend.

On Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange said it will stay open and operate normally on Monday and Tuesday.

A tractor-trailer jackknifed, and a beer truck crashed into the median on Interstate 81 near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, during the morning commute. No injuries were reported.

Some schools were planning to close early or not open at all Monday in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

The Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots expected to be out of town by the time the storm arrived in Boston. The team planned to leave Logan Airport at 12:30 p.m. Monday for Phoenix, where the temperature will reach the high 60s.

Long Island snowfall since 1947

This has been an “active” winter, climatologists say, but snowfall totals haven’t set a record for Long Island yet.

Here are monthly snowfall totals recorded by Brookhaven National Laboratory since the winter of 1947-48. The chart shows amount of snowfall for December through February. For 2014, the February total is as of Feb. 20.

A History of New York City Snowstorms (1970 – 2014)

Since 1970 New York has experienced fifteen snowstorms of one-foot or more (more than half of them in the past ten winters). An additional seven storms have dumped between 10 and 12 inches. The summary of storms that follows lists not only these big ones but others in the five to ten-inch range, since even these can be debilitating, especially in Manhattan (these smaller storms often produced greater accumulations in the suburbs). The storms, 56 in total, are arranged by calendar date. If you’d like to see a list arranged by each winter, double click here.

JANUARY

Jan. 1, 1971 – Old Man Winter waited until New Year’s Eve revelers returned home before dumping the largest snowfall of the winter. 6.4″ of snow accumulated between 4AM-4PM, with much of it falling in the storm’s initial three hours. This was the century’s largest New Year’s Day snowfall (and second all-time after a nine-inch snowstorm way back in 1869).

Jan. 2-3, 2014 – A sprawling winter storm moved into the area during the evening with snow beginning in NYC at 6:30 and continuing into the overnight hours. In total 6.4″ fell. Besides snow and gusty winds, there was Arctic cold to contend with as the mercury fell from the upper 20s when the snow started to 18 degrees by midnight and down to 11 by daybreak.

Jan. 4, 1988 - The City woke up to 5.8″ of snow that fell overnight. It was the winter’s biggest snowfall. Four days later a steady light snow fell throughout the day, accumulating an additional5.4″.

Jan. 7-8, 1996 - A crippling blizzard began Sunday afternoon and continued until early afternoon thenext day. It immobilized an area from West Virgina through Massachusetts and dumped 20.2″ on Central Park, the third greatest snow total in NYC history (13.6″ fell on Jan. 7 and 6.6″ on Jan. 8, records for the dates). At one point five inches of snow fell between 5-7PM. Wind gusts of 40-50 mph whipped the snow into three and four-foot drifts on many side streets.

Areas west of NYC reported considerably more snow than Central Park: 32″ in Staten Island; 28″ in Newark; 26″ in Allentown, PA; and 31″ in Philadelphia. Temperatures were also very cold with a high/low of just 22/12 on the 7th and 23/16 on the 8th.

Looking west on Greenwich Ave.

Jan. 11, 1991 - 5.7″ of snow accumulated during the afternoon and evening before changing to rain overnight as temps rose into the mid-30s (close to one inch of rain fell). Despite the changeover it was a record amount of snow for the date.

Jan. 11-12, 2011 - Snow began the night of the 11th (three inches fell by midnight) and was over by daybreak, totaling 9.1″. The 6.1″ that fell during the morning of the 12th was a record for the date.

Photo was napped shortly after midnight in Greenwich Village on 7th Ave. South near Sheridan Square.

Jan. 13, 1982 - A late afternoon/nighttime snowstorm that dumped 5.8″ on NYC was the same winter system that affected Washington, DC earlier in the afternoon when an Air Florida jet crashedinto the Potomac River minutes after takeoff, killing 78. The following day an additional 3.5″ of snow fell from an “Alberta clipper” that moved through in the evening hours.

Jan. 20, 1978 – Snow that began yesterday evening fell at a rate of an inch per hour between 2-7AM, and by 2PM 13.6″ had fallen. This was NYC’s biggest snowfall since the “Lindsay snowstorm” of February 1969. (However, in less than three weeks this storm would be largely forgotten, overshadowed by the great blizzard of February 1978.)

Jan. 20, 2000 - The largest snowfall of the winter, 5.5″, caught forecasters by surprise. The accumulation was held down when sleet and freezing rain mixed in. The same storm buried Raleigh, NC with 20.3″ of snow, the largest snowfall in that city’s history.

Jan. 21, 2001 – A quick-moving snowstorm dumped six inches of snow on Sunday morning, a record for the date. The flakes stopped flying by 8AM.

Jan. 21, 2014 – A wind-driven snow began at around 9AM and fell throughout the day and evening, with 11″ on the ground by midnight – a record for the date (an additional 0.5″ fell after midnight). Besides wind and snow, the storm was made more fierce by Arctic cold, with temperatures in the teens all day. The storm extended from DC to Boston. Its timing couldn’t have been worse for commuters, who had to contend with getting home in the teeth of the storm. Accumulations were even greater on Long Island.

Jan. 22, 1987 - A daytime snowstorm dumped 8.1″ of snow on the City while much of Long Island picked up a foot or more. (Virginia, DC, Maryland, Delaware and South Jersey bore the brunt of the storm.) The City’s accumulation was held down when sleet mixed in. This was NYC’s biggest snowfall in four years and would be the biggest until the March 1993 Superstorm.

Jan. 22-23, 2005 - A weekend snowstorm began early Saturday afternoon and by daybreak Sunday13.8″ had fallen (8.5″ fell on Saturday, 5.3″ on Sunday). After a very cold a.m. low of 9 degrees on the 22nd, the high of 25 was reached at midnight. This was the biggest January snowstorm since the blizzard of 1996.

Jan. 26-27, 2011 - Snow began falling heavily by late afternoon and blizzard conditions developed after nightfall. By midnight close to 13 inches had fallen, and by the time the snow wound down at daybreak on the 27th 19 inches had piled up. (This was just one month after the post-Christmas blizzard socked NYC with 20 inches.) Shortly after midnight I ventured outside to snap photos and found traffic mostly at a standstill on the streets of the West Village, with taxis on Seventh Ave. pointed every which way. The quiet usually associated with a snowfall was broken by the sound of spinning tires. This furious spinning produced an odor of burning rubber that pervaded the air.

The 6.7″ of snow that fell before daybreak on the 27th was a record for the date and brought the month’s snow total to 36.0″ – the most ever in January. (Just one year earlier 36.9″ of snow fell in February.) In the past thirty-three days, beginning with the Christmas blizzard, an incredible 52″ of snow fell. And for the first time NYC had two snowstorms of 19″ or more in one winter.

Jan. 27-28, 2004 - Snow moved in after 8PM and by the time it ended early the next morning 10.3″inches of powdery snow had accumulated (six inches of it fell tonight). January 27 was the fifth day in a row in which high temperatures were colder than 25 degrees.

FEBRUARY

Feb. 3, 1996 - 7.5″ of snow, which was over by daybreak, fell in advance of the coldest air of the winter. This was the the third snowfall of six+ inches this winter (with one more of that magnitude two weeks later). I had flown down to Key West for vacation the day before thinking I had escaped, but a few days later the Arctic cold penetrated all the way down to the Keys and it felt like more like fall.

Feb. 3, 2014 – One day after the high temperature was 56 degrees, eight inches of heavy, wet snow fell during the morning and afternoon as the temperature hovered around the freezing mark. Today’s snowfall was a record for the date and was the third accumulation of six inches or more this winter (just the eighth winter since 1960 in which this has occurred). Snow began falling less than nine hours after the Super Bowl, played in northern NJ, had ended.

Feb. 4, 1995 - Only 11.8″ of snow fell during the winter of 1994-95 and almost all of it fell today as10.8″ of heavy, wet snow fell furiously on a Saturday morning (close to three inches fell between 6-7AM) before changing over to rain at around 9AM. Then the coldest air of the winter moved in overnight.

Feb. 6-7, 1978 – Less than three weeks after 13.6″ of snow buried the City, an even bigger snowstorm struck. Snow began before dawn and by midnight 15.5″ had fallen in Central Park. An additional 2.2″ fell the next morning. Snow, drifted by wind gusts of 30-40 mph, fell heaviest between 7PM-1AM, when it fell at a rate of more than an inch per hour.

The storm’s 17.7″ accumulation made this NYC’s biggest snowstorm since December 26-27, 1947, when 26.4″ buried the City (later broken in February 2006). This was the first winter in 17 years to have two snowstorms of one foot or more. Snow would be on the ground in Central Park for the next five weeks.

Feb. 8-9, 2013 – An intense winter storm developed off the Delmarva peninsula during the day and by nightfall near-blizzard conditions were common in NYC and points north and east. An icy mix of light snow and wind blown sleet began at daybreak and fell throughout the day, becoming steadier and heavier after dark. By midnight, 6.3″ had fallen in Central Park; by the time the snow ended shortly before daybreak on Feb. 9, 11.4″ had piled up. This was the City’s 15th biggest snowfall since 1970. However, this amount was manageable compared to Suffolk County and New England, where accumulations of two to three feet were common.

Feb. 8-9, 1994 - After January saw a large amount of sleet and freezing rain NYC finally got a storm that brought snow as nine inches fell. It came down especially heavy between 9AM-1PM, but the snow predicted for the rest of the day didn’t materialize as it came down as sleet. Snow resumed after midnight and an additional 1.8″ fell.

Feb. 10, 2010 - Four days after a monster snowstorm stopped short of NYC’s doorstep, another one made its presence known today and dumped 10″ of heavy, wet snow. Because the daytime temperature was just above freezing (the high was 34) it prevented main streets from getting much in the way of accumulation.

Feb. 11, 1983 - A monster snowstorm moved in Friday afternoon and continued until the wee hours of the morning on Saturday. The storm really cranked up between 8-11PM when six inches of snow came down. When the last flakes had fallen 17.6″ had piled up. It was the biggest snowfall in NYC since 1978 (when 17.7″ fell on Feb. 5-7) and at the time was the sixth biggest snowstorm in NYC history (it’s now ranked twelfth).

Feb. 11, 1994 - 12.8″ of snow fell during a snowstorm that began shortly before daybreak and continued into Friday evening. This was just three days after a nine-inch snowstorm and was NYC’s biggest snowfall since 1983, which happened to occur on this date as well.

A nearly deserted 5th Ave. near St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the afternoon of Feb. 11, 1994.

Feb. 11-12, 2006 - New York was the bulls-eye for a record-setting amount of snow over the weekend. Beginning the night of the 11th as light snow (2.8″ fell by midnight), it turned heavier after midnight and between 4-10AM Sunday morning the snow was falling at a rate of two inches/hour (between 8:25-9:25 nearly four inches piled up).

When it was over 26.9″ had fallen, a half-inch more than the City’s previous record on Dec. 26-27, 1947. Snowfall totals outside of NYC were also impressive but not nearly as much as what Central Park picked up. This storm accounted for two-thirds of the winter’s total snowfall. Only 1.3″ of snow fell for the rest of the winter.

Snow-buried benches in Washington Square Park.

Feb. 12, 1975 – A quick-moving winter storm delivered the biggest snowfall of the winter, with 7.8″piling up between 8AM-3PM. Snow fell at the rate of one-inch per hour for five consecutive hours. This was the biggest snowfall of the eight winters from 1970 thru 1977.

Feb. 13-14, 2014 – An intense storm system moved up the East Coast and brought with it high winds, heavy snow in the morning (9.5″), rain in the evening (accompanied by thunder & lightning) and more snow after midnight (3.0″). This was the winter’s fourth snowfall of 6 inches or more, something that’s happened in just one other winter since 1950 (in 1958). This snowstorm brought the season’s snowfall to 54.0″, moving it up to 7th on the all-time list.

Feb. 16-17, 1996 - Snow fell throughout the day and by the time it came to and end shortly after 1AM 10.7″ had piled up (9.9″ of it fell on the 16th; the rest after midnight), the third snowstorm this winter of eight-inches or more. It was a fluffy snow with just 0.52″ of water content.

Feb. 16-17, 2003 - After beginning Sunday night (when 3.5″ fell), the brunt of the Presidents’ Day blizzard kicked in and dumped an additional 16.3″ on Monday, making this NYC’s fourth biggest snowfall on record. (Since then three snowstorms during the winters of 2005/06, 2009/10 and 2010/11 have surpassed it.) Ferocious winds gusting over 40 mph created snow drifts of 3-5 feet. And although Monday’s temperatures were quite cold (high/low of 26/14), they were a warm-up from Sunday’s frigid 15/8.

Feb. 19, 1972- A nor’easter packing 40 mph winds brought the biggest snowfall of the winter, 5.7″, but it was part of a sloppy mix of snow, sleet and rain so there was never more than two to three inches of snow on the ground at any given time. Temperatures didn’t go below freezing until evening. In total 1.64″ of precipitation was measured.

Feb. 19, 1979 - A fast-moving snowstorm buried the City on Presidents’ Day with 12.7″ of snow between 4:00AM-noon. However, the storm’s deepest snows, of 18-24″, fell in Virginia, DC, Maryland and Delaware. The storm came in the midst of a deep freeze that saw fifteen of the past nineteen days with high temperatures at the freezing mark or below, averaging 14 degrees below average. Including today’s snowfall, 20.1″ of snow fell during these nineteen days. Another President’s Day storm with even more snow would strike NYC 24 years later.

February 22, 2008 - Six inches of slushy snow fell during the morning into the early afternoon, the biggest snowfall of the winter – and the largest accumulation since NYC’s all-time snowstorm two Februarys ago. Today’s snow was also a record for the date.

February 24, 2005 - Snow moved in during the evening and by 3AM six inches had accumulated.

February 25-26 2010 - After beginning in the morning as steady rain a changeover to snow occurred in the afternoon and developed into NYC’s third major snowstorm of the winter. 9.4″ fell by midnight and an additional 11.5″ of snow fell on the 26th, ending in the early afternoon, bringing the storm’s two-day total to 20.9″. This was the fourth largest accumulation in NYC history – and just 0.1″ shy of the total from the great blizzard of March 1888.

With this storm February’s total snowfall reached 36.9″, the most ever measured in any month. (And this was without getting any snow from the big Mid-Atlantic blizzard of Feb. 4-5 that stopped at our doorstep.) This turned out to be the last snowfall of the winter.

February 26, 1991 - A surprise snowstorm dumped 8.9″ of wet snow, the biggest accumulation in eight years (since 17.6″ buried the City in on Feb. 11-12, 1983 ). Because the temperature was just above freezing for much of the day the snow didn’t accumulate much on the streets or sidewalks. This was the winter’s third snowfall of five inches or more.

February 28-March 1, 2005 - March came in a like a lion camouflaged as a lamb by all of the snow covering him. 7.7″ of snow fell from a storm that began the afternoon of Feb. 28 and ended at daybreak on March 1. It wasn’t a cold storm as the temperature rose into the low 40s after the snow ended. This was the third accumulation of five inches+ in the past ten days. Combined, 18.7″ fell from these snow events.

MARCH

March 1-2, 2009 - 8.3″ of snow fell from a quick-moving storm that began the night of the 1st (when 1.8″ fell), making this the largest accumulation of the winter (and the most to fall in three years). 12-15″ fell out on Long Island.

March 5, 1981 - A heavy, wet snowfall of 8.6″ was the biggest snow of the winter and a record amount for the date. It also has the distinction of being the second largest accumulation in the month of March in the 1970-2014 period.

March 5-6, 2001 - Call this the storm that couldn’t. The City was put on high alert after 15-24″ of snow was predicted during the weekend. City schools and some businesses were closed on Monday and we waited, but it was in vain as the storm never lived up to its billing. The storm strengthened later and further north than predicted. New York received 3.5″ as a consolation prize. However, Long Island received significant accumulations.

March 8-9, 1984 - Snow moved in the night of the 8th and by daybreak 6.9″ had accumulated (5.1″ of it on the 9th), making this the biggest snow of the winter. It was a powdery snow with just 0.38″ of water content.

March 13, 1993 - The great March Superstorm (also called “Storm of the Century”) paralyzed the Eastern third of the nation and dumped 10.6″ of snow on NYC. The heavy snow changed to sleet and rain later in the afternoon, a Saturday, reducing the predicted snow total by about six inches. The sound of the sleet lashing against my windows, propelled by 40-60 mph wind gusts, was deafening. All told, 2.37″ of precipitation fell. To read a first-person account of the storm double click here.

Plowing down 7th Ave. South, approaching Bleecker St.

March 16, 2007 - An all-day onslaught of sleet and snow dumped 5.5″ of icy precipitation, the biggest snow of the winter. This storm somewhat resembled last month’s severe sleet storm onValentine’s Day, but this one had considerably more snow. The total amount of precipitation was 2.07″, a record for the date. This was the last snowfall of the winter, a winter in which just 12.4″ fell, quite a contrast from the previous four winters, all of which had at least forty inches of snow.

March 19, 1992 - The biggest snowfall of the winter occurred today, a sloppy 6.2″. This tripled the winter’s relatively snowless snow total to 9.4″. Just two degrees separated the day’s high and low (33/31).

APRIL

April 6, 1982 - Just 1.1″ of snow had fallen in February and March when a blizzard dumped 9.6″ of snow on the City today, less than a week before Easter. More than a foot fell in New Jersey and Westchester County. The storm started as rain in the pre-dawn hours and changed over to snow mid-morning and lasted through late afternoon. By midnight the temperature had fallen to a record low 21 degrees. This was the most snow to fall so late in the season since ten inches fell on April 3, 1915. To read a first-person account click here.

April 7, 2003 - Four inches of snow fell, the biggest April snowfall in twenty-one years. This brought the season’s snowfall close to 50 inches.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER

October 29, 2011 – An intense nor’easter lashed the area with high winds and outrageously early snowfall. The 2.9″ of heavy, wet snow that was measured in Central Park was the most ever to fall in October (5.2″ fell in Newark and over a foot buried northern NJ, parts of NY state, Connecticut, western Massachusetts and New Hampshire).

Since the temperature never fell below freezing there was no serious accumulation on City streets (except for slush). However, the day’s low of 33, which occurred in the early afternoon, was the coldest reading in October since 1988. Total liquid precipitation from the storm was two inches. Remarkably, twelve weeks would pass before the next measurable snow (4.3″ on Jan. 21, 2012).

November 7, 2012 – Just nine days after the region was raked by hurricane Sandy’s high winds and record storm surge, a nor’easter lashed the area. It moved far enough off the coast to pull cold air into the area, changing the rain to snow by 2PM. This was just the fifth snowfall of one-inch+ to occur in November in the past 40 years – and the first since 1997. 4.7″ fell (4.3″ of it today), making it the earliest 4-inch snowfall on record (the previous record was in 1989 when 4.7″ fell on Nov. 22-23). It was also the largest accumulation of the calendar year, topping the 4.3″ that fell on Jan 21.

November 22-23, 1989 - A Thanksgiving Day snowstorm along the Mid-Atlantic (which began late the previous night) dumped 4.7″ of snow on NYC; however, it was over by the time the Macy’sparade began. Although this wasn’t officially a wintertime snowfall it was larger than any accumulation during the 1989/90 season. The day’s high topped out at just 31, twenty degrees below average.

DECEMBER

December 5, 2002 - One year after record warmth occurred on this date (high of 70 degrees) six inches of snow fell, the biggest snow so early in the season since 1938.

December 5-6, 2003 - Snow fell during the afternoon and lasted into early evening, accumulatingeight inches (more than was predicted). This snowfall came one year to the date after six inches fell. It was part of a two-stage storm that brought more significant snowfall the following day. That day, a Saturday, the City was under a blizzard warning for much of the day and an additional six inches of snow fell. The high temperature rose to only 28 after a morning low of 23. Just a week into the month and this was already the snowiest December since 1960, when 19.8 inches fell.

Waverly Place, on the North side of Washington Square Park.

December 9, 2005 - 9.3″ of snow fell in the past six days. The 5.8″ of wet snow that fell on this Friday morning was a record for the date.

December 19-20, 1995 - Beginning today and continuing into tomorrow NYC experienced its biggest December snowstorm since 1960 as 7.7″ fell (10-12″ had been predicted). Less than 10 miles away, La Guardia Airport was buried by 15″.

December 19-20, 2009 - This first snow of the winter was a snowstorm that moved in late in the afternoon on a Saturday. By the time it ended at around 4AM on Sunday 10.9″ had fallen. Long Island received considerably more with parts of Suffolk County buried by more than 20″.

December 26-27, 2010 - Snow began falling during the afternoon and by evening blizzard conditions had developed. When the flakes stopped flying the following morning 20 inches had piled up. The City was largely unprepared for a storm of such intensity (and mayor Bloomberg was on vacation at an undisclosed location).

This was the sixth biggest snowstorm in NYC’s history (and it shared its dates with New York’s landmark 1947 snowstorm that dumped 26.4″). It was the second 20-inch accumulation of the year – the only year to have two storms of such magnitude (the first was on Feb. 25-26 when 20.9″ fell). The blizzard’s bulls-eye was west of NYC where most towns in New Jersey were buried by more than two feet of snow (e.g., Newark measured 24.2 inches).

December 28, 1990 - Today’s 7.2″ snowfall (which began late last night) was the largest accumulation in nearly four years (since January 1987) and the biggest December snowfall since 1960. Snow ended shortly before 11AM.

December 30, 2000 - A foot of snow fell as the year was winding down. It was a record for the date, the most snow since the blizzard of January ’96 and the biggest December snowstorm since 1960. This Saturday snowstorm was a fast mover, lasting just eight hours (5AM-1PM).

Mitt Romney Shifts His Position on Climate Change—Again

He made global warming a punch line in his 2012 nomination speech. Now he says it’s a “major problem.”

During his 2012 presidential bid, Romney was dismissive about Democratic efforts to combat the effects of climate change, and he pushed for an expanded commitment to fossil fuels. But in a speech in California on Monday, Romney, who is considering a third run for president in 2016, signaled a shift on the issue. According to the Palm Springs Desert Sun, the former Massachusetts governor “said that while he hopes the skeptics about global climate change are right, he believes it’s real and a major problem,” and he lamented that Washington had done “almost nothing” to stop it.

For Romney, this is his second about-face on climate change. In his 2010 book, No Apology, he called human activity a “contributing factor” to melting ice caps. And in the run-up to the 2012 Republican primaries, Romney backed a reduction in emissions to curb anthropogenic global warming. “I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer,” he told the Manchester Union-Leader in 2011. “And…I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past, but I believe that we contribute to that. So I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.”

But as the 2012 campaign evolved, Romney reversed course. He said that heopposed curbing carbon dioxide emissions. He declared, “We don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.” Instead, he pledged to increase coal production and ramp up oil exploration. At the Republican convention in Tampa, he turned climate change into a punch line. “I’m not in this race to slow the rise of the oceans or to heal the planet,” he remarked during his nomination speech—a jab at President Obama’s 2008 campaign promise that his victory would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

A Romney spokesman says the former governor’s remarks on Monday are”consistent with what he said on the trail in 2012 about climate change.” Perhaps. It just depends which 2012 comments he’s referring to.

RUSH LIMBAUGH’S CHIEF OF STAFF DIES

‘I never once doubted his instincts. I had total trust’

JOE KOVACS

An emotional Rush Limbaugh remembers his chief of staff, Kit Carson, who died of brain cancer Monday, Jan. 26. 2015.
Christopher “Kit” Carson, the chief of staff for America’s top-rated radio host Rush Limbaugh, died Monday morning in New Jersey after a four-year battle with brain cancer. He was 58.

“It’s such a void because he loved this job,” Limbaugh said Monday with a heavy heart as he paid tribute for nearly an hour to Carson, who was the first staffer he hired for his show 27 years ago. “He’s just going to be really missed … Even though we knew this was coming for a while … It’s a huge void in everybody’s heart.”

“You knew you were talking to somebody who actively loved being alive and had active respect for being alive,” he continued. “It’s the one bad thing about getting old, because your friends start [getting] old, too.”

“He was such an integral part of this program every day, even though you never heard him. …

“He was irreplaceable and it’s just a very, very, sad, unfortunate thing that happens to everybody, and the way he dealt with it is a lesson in and of itself.”

Kit Carson (courtesy RushLimbaugh.com)
Kit Carson
Carson was originally from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, area, and his initial career goals led toward Hollywood, Limbaugh explained.

“He wanted to be an actor, and he ended up enjoying what he did here so much, he became 100-percent totally devoted to the program.”

Limbaugh said Kit “became the resident expert on me and the program. He became its number-one champion, defender, evangelist.”

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As far as his presence around the broadcast office, “Kit Carson honest to God never ever had a bad word to say about anybody,” Limbaugh said. “He did not engage in backstabbing.”

Rush recalled the first time Carson showed up for work, saying, “He walked in the room wearing those cargo shorts and the short white socks and the black Keds. He didn’t care if you were laughing at him. It didn’t matter. And everyone laughed.”

Limbaugh noted he had complete trust in Carson.

“He is the one guy … I never once doubted his instincts. I had total trust. … The only thing he cared about was doing whatever to make sure I looked the best I could be.

“He had this innocent exuberance about everybody. … You really had to earn his distrust.”

Limbaugh even admitted, “I stole his opinions sometimes. Sometimes I gave him credit.”

Listen to Rush Limbaugh remembering Kit Carson:
“He did not allow me to be pessimistic or negative. He didn’t allow me to get down in the dumps about anything. And if he sensed that I was, he would do anything that he could that enabled me to get the best out of myself.”

Limbaugh recalled the happiest he ever saw Carson was when Kit first met his future spouse.

“When he met his soon-to-be wife Theresa, he was like a kid in a candy store forever.”

Once married, “He could not believe that he actually convinced this woman to marry him,” Limbaugh said. “It was exactly like a fairy tale.”

“I grabbed his hand and held his hand and said, ‘There’s nobody who can replace you. There’s no one who can do what you do.’”

Limbaugh says Carson had a head that was full of red hair, and even after undergoing cancer treatments, he still retained much of it.

“He loved to go walking down 6th Avenue and Japanese tourists thought he was Conan O’Brien,” Limbaugh said.

Carson had many friends among the news media.

WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah was among them.

“I’ve known Kit Carson for more than 20 years,” Farah said. “I worked with him on the development of a daily column for Rush at the Sacramento Union. I worked with him again during my collaboration with Rush on his mega-bestselling ‘See I Told You So.’ And, over the years, he has always been a gracious help to me – a real gentleman. He will be greatly missed by all – especially Rush, whom he served as chief of staff for so long.”

James Grisham, producer of Sean Hannity’s radio program, told WND: “Kit Carson always took time from a very busy schedule to kid around with us or help if needed. He was a man of faith lived, never talked about much, the kind that I think matter most.”

Carson leaves behind his wife, Theresa, and two sons, Jack and Jesse.

Limbaugh says his own wife, Kathryn, has been spending time with Carson’s family in recent days.

“She thinks we ought to put a chair in [the Palm Beach, Florida, studio] and up in New York, called the Kit Chair, the honorary Kit Chair,” Limbaugh said. “It’s always gonna be there. That chair is always gonna be where he sat. So we’re gonna do that.”http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/rush-limbaughs-right-hand-man-dies/

Hacked! U.S. Military Command’s Twitter and Youtube Accounts Attacked!

Social media accounts for the U.S. military’s Central Command appeared to have been hacked on Monday, with the command posting threatening messages on Twitter and YouTube to American troops.

The first rogue tweet was posted about 12:30 p.m. It appeared to come from sympathizers of the Islamic State militant group. The Central Command has orchestrated the U.S.-led airstrike campaign against the militants in Iraq and Syria and is beginning to train Iraqi troops to respond to the threat in the region.

The background and profile photo of the Centcom account were both changed to show an apparent militant and the phrases “CyberCaliphate” and “i love you isis,” using one of the acronyms for the militant group.

U.S. Military Command Hacked by ‘ISIS’
The Twitter account and YouTube channel for U.S. Central Command were hacked Monday by someone purporting to be aligned with ISIS. Both accounts were covered in pro-ISIS propaganda, including messages warning American soldiers to “watch their back” and ISIS recruitment videos.

Nancy A. Youssef reports while there were claims in the tweets that ISIS had access to personal information, the pictures attached, which included phone directories, are available on Pentagon websites. It took about an hour for Twitter to suspend the compromised @CENTCOM account.

President Obama Speaks on Tackling Identity Theft and Improving Consumer and Student Privacy

The President will host an event at the Federal Trade Commission offices in Washington, DC to lay out his next steps in his plan to improve confidence in technology by tackling identity theft and improving consumer and student privacy. He will discuss the next steps in his BuySecure Initiative on consumer financial protection and new efforts to bring more innovation to the classroom by bringing peace of mind to educators and parents.

U.S. military social media accounts apparently hacked by Islamic State sympathizers

By Dan Lamothe

Hackers claiming allegiance to the Islamic State took control of the social media accounts of the U.S. military’s Central Command on Monday, posting threatening messages and propaganda videos, along with some military documents.

The command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts were eventually taken offline, but not before a string of tweets and the release of military documents, some of which listed contact information for senior military personnel. A Centcom spokesman confirmed their accounts were “compromised,” and that the military was investigating.

Virtually all of the documents posted appear to already have been publicly available online, but the incident is nevertheless embarrassing to the U.S. military. Centcom oversees the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and frequently posts videos of airstrikes on its social media accounts.

The first rogue tweet was posted about 12:30 p.m. and the account was not suspended for about another 40 minutes. The background and profile photo of the Twitter account were both changed to show an apparent militant and the phrases “CyberCaliphate” and “i love you isis,” using one of the acronyms for the militant group.

“AMERICAN SOLDIERS, WE ARE COMING, WATCH YOUR BACK,” one tweet said.

The YouTube and Twitter accounts of U.S. Central Command were suspended after apparent hacking by Islamic State sympathizers. (Reuters)

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the Obama administration is “examining and investigating the extent of the incident.”

“This is something we are obviously looking into and something we take seriously,” he told reporters Monday, adding he didn’t have a lot of information. He said that there is a “pretty significant difference” between “a large data breach and the hacking of a Twitter account.”

The Centcom YouTube page also appeared to have been hacked, with two Islamic State propaganda videos added to the page and the same “CyberCaliphate” banner posted. The YouTube account was eventually “terminated due to repeated or severe violations” of YouTube’s guidelines, the website said.

Live: Obama addresses data privacy and cyber issues at the FTC

by Robert Hackett

Obama presents new data privacy plans at the FTC as part of his series of State of the Union Address previews.

Today at the Federal Trade Commission, President Obama is set to unveil new plans for data privacy and identity theft protections. “The President delivers remarks and lays out his next steps in his plan to improve confidence in technology by tackling identity theft and improving consumer and student privacy,”says the White House schedule of the talk, which slotted to start a few minutes before noon Eastern.

Two new pieces of legislation are anticipated, reportsThe New York Times: First, the Personal Data Notification and Protection Act, which would create a national 30-day standard for companies to disclose to customers that their data has been stolen. (Currently,a collection of state rules create a confusing legal environment for companies coping with data breach disclosure.) Second, the Student Data Privacy Act, which would protect students and educators’ information from technology companies.

Obama has been delivering spoilers for his legislative proposals to get the citizenry pumped ahead of his State of the Union Address next week. The intentional leaks—or “SOTU spoilers”—buck against the executive office’s typical strategy of keeping everything secret until day of the address.

Cyber security has become a top priority for government and private companies since a series of high profile breaches have rocked U.S. enterprises. In November, Sony Pictures Entertainment discovered it had been breached—an event culminating in the president calling out North Korea as responsible for the attack. Before that, J.P. Morgan, Home Depot and Target suffered other notable breaches.

*12:30: During President Obama’s speech, U.S. Central Command’s Twitter account appears to have been hacked by ISIS sympathizers and it has leaked apparently sensitive information.

12:30: President Obama touts California having recently passed data privacy legislation that protects student data from being subject to targeted advertising and marketing.

12:28: President Obama proposed the Student Digital Privacy Act, which would prevent companies from using data collected on students in classrooms for marketing. That information should only be used for education, he says.

12:25: President Obama says “we want to make sure our children being smart and safe online.” Companies should not be collecting information on kids without the permission of parents, he says.

12:22: President Obama proposes “a single strong national standard” so that Americans know when their information has been breached or misused. He proposes a 30-day standard. Right now there is a costly “patchwork” of state-by-state disclosure laws, he says.

Obama lays out new data-protection bills

Marching toward his State of the Union address later this month, President Obama on Monday laid out new privacy proposals to protect American consumers and students from identity theft and data breaches.

In a speech at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, Mr. Obama proposed a variety of new steps, including legislation that would require companies to notify customers within 30 days if their identity has been stolen or if other data breaches have occurred.

The president cast the proposal as central to a growing economy in the 21st century, saying data breaches represent a serious threat to the financial security of all Americans.

“This is a direct threat to the economic security of American families and we’ve got to stop it. If we’re going to be connected, then we’ve got to be protected. As Americans, we shouldn’t have to forfeit our basic privacy when we go online to do our business,” Mr. Obama said.

The 30-day federal standard, should it be passed by Congress and become law, will replace state laws on data-breach notification. Those laws differ from state to state.

Retailers strongly back the president’s proposal.

“We applaud the president and his administration in their continued efforts to push and enact cyber- and data security policies that protect consumers while providing much-needed focus on concrete steps that can be taken now in order to protect consumers and businesses alike from cyber criminals,” said David French, senior vice president for government relations at the National Retail Federation.

The president also put forth a plan to protect the personal information of students. Mr. Obama said he’s introducing legislation that would make it illegal for companies to sell student data for anything unrelated to education, and also would protect students from targeted advertising based on data collected in school.

“Data collected on students in the classroom should only be used … to teach our children, not to market to our children,” Mr. Obama said.

The president announced an updated version of the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, first proposed in 2012. The White House will release the revamped legislation within 45 days, Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama also said banks such as JPMorganCase and Bank of America have agreed to make credit scores available for free to their customers.

In addition, the Department of Energy also released a new “voluntary code of conduct” for utilities and other parties that handle data related to energy usage.

The president will continue his focus on cybersecurity and Internet access throughout the week, leading up to his State of the Union address on Jan. 20.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama will talk about U.S. efforts to enhance cybersecurity. On Wednesday, he’ll speak on plans to provide broadband Internet to more Americans.

Story 1: American People Do Not Trust Big Government Democratic and Republican Parties and The Political Elitist Establishment In Washington — New Political Party Formed When Independents Represent 50% or More of Voters — When? 2022 or 2024 — Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Constitutional Government, Consumption Tax Replacing All Federal Taxes, and Stopping All Legal and Illegal Immigration Exceeding 1 Million Persons Per Year, Replacing The Warfare and Welfare State With A Peace and Prosperity Economy — Jobs For Everyone — I Have A Dream — The Winner Takes It All — Part 1 — Videos

ABBA – I Have A Dream (From The Late Late Breakfast Show, England 1982)

Abba – The Winner Takes It All

Party Affiliation

U.S. Partisanship Shifts to GOP After Midterms

Story Highlights

U.S. partisanship shifts to net-Republican after midterms

GOP also made gains after 1994 and 2002 midterms

Democrats made gains following 2006 midterms

PRINCETON, N.J. — Since the Republican Party’s strong showing on Election Day last month, Americans’ political allegiances have shifted toward the GOP. Prior to the elections, 43% of Americans identified as Democrats or leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 39% identified as or leaned Republican. Since then, Republicans have opened up a slight advantage, 42% to 41%, representing a net shift of five percentage points in the partisanship gap.

The pre-election results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews with 17,259 U.S. adults, conducted between Oct. 1 and Nov. 4. The post-election interviews are based on 12,671 interviews conducted Nov. 5-30.

There have been similar “bandwagon” effects for the winning party in the past, including after the 1994 and 2002 midterm elections, when Republicans benefited, and after the 2006 election, when Democrats made gains.

The most dramatic shift occurred after the 1994 midterms, in which Republicans picked up more than 50 seats in the House of Representatives to gain a majority in that chamber for the first time in 40 years. Before the 1994 elections, Democrats enjoyed a four-point advantage in party affiliation, but after the GOP wave, Republicans emerged with a 12-point margin, for a total shift of 16 points in the gap.

In 2002, Republicans capitalized on the popularity of George W. Bush to accomplish the rare feat of having the president’s party gain seats in Congress in a midterm election. After that strong showing, partisanship moved from a five-point Democratic edge to a four-point Republican margin.

Four years later, with Bush’s job approval rating stuck below 40%, Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress. An already strong Democratic partisanship advantage of 14 points swelled to 22 points after the election.

Not every “wave” election has produced a distinct shift in a party’s advantage. The 1998 and 2010 midterms were also notable for their outcomes, but did not produce any apparent change in Americans’ basic party loyalties. In 1998, Democrats gained seats in the House even with a Democratic president in office. In 2010, Republicans gained a net of 63 seats in the House to win back control of that chamber. That year, the shifts in party allegiances seemed to be in place before the election, with the smallest Democratic edge seen in any recent midterm year. Consequently, in 2010 it appeared that shifts in party allegiances drove the election results, whereas in other years the election results seemed to produce shifts in party affiliation after the election.

The bandwagon effect can largely be explained by the amount of positive publicity given to the victorious party after its success. However, it is unclear why there would be a bandwagon effect following most midterm elections but not all of them.

No Clear Historical Pattern on How Long Post-Midterm Party Gains Last

One key question is how long the effects persist when they do occur. A review of the three elections with obvious bandwagon effects reveals no consistent pattern.

The 1994 Republican surge in partisanship was the largest and the longest lasting. Republicans maintained a healthy eight-point advantage in partisanship through December 1994, and an average four-point advantage from January through March 1995. By April, Democrats had regained a slight edge, and for the most part held it throughout the remainder of the year.

The 2002 Republican gains were fairly short-lived, evident in November and December and largely gone by January 2003. However, when the Iraq War commenced in March, Republicans saw another surge in partisanship.

The 2006 Democratic gains were the most brief, disappearing by December — though that still left the party with a healthy 12-point edge in partisanship.

Implications

The 2014 midterms were an unqualified success for the Republican Party. The GOP took control of the Senate and expanded its majority in the House, giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 2006. And that success has caused Americans to view the Republican Party more favorably than the Democratic Party, as well as to say congressional Republicans should have more influence than President Barack Obama over the direction the nation takes in the next year. Americans are also now more likely to align themselves politically with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.

It is not clear how long these good feelings toward the GOP will last. That could be influenced by what Republicans do with their enhanced power. While they are unlikely to achieve many of their major policy objectives with a Democratic president in office, how they and the president navigate the key issues facing the nation over the next two years will go a long way toward determining where each party stands heading into the 2016 presidential election.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Nov. 5-30, 2014, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 12,671 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

Obama Loses Support Among White Millennials

Story Highlights

Obama job approval among whites aged 18 to 29 is down to 34%

White millennials’ approval only 3 points above older whites’

Obama approval remains much higher among nonwhite 18-29s

PRINCETON, N.J. — President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in 2014 among white 18- to 29-year-olds is 34%, three points higher than among whites aged 30 and older. This is the narrowest approval gap between the president’s previously strong support base of white millennials and older white Americans since Obama took office.

By contrast, the president’s approval rating was nine percentage points higher among younger whites in 2009, and 10 points higher in 2010. Additionally, while the president’s approval among younger whites matched his overall national rating in his first two years in office, it is now eight points below the national average. These data underscore the gradual erosion of the disproportionately strong support Obama received from young white voters as he took office in 2009 and ran for re-election in 2012.

The data are based on yearly averages from Gallup’s Daily tracking, including 2014 data through November.

Obama’s support among white millennials has factored into his two presidential election successes. Exit polls conducted after the 2012 election, for example, showed that Obama received 44% of the vote of white 18- to 29-year-olds, about six points higher than he received among whites aged 30 and older. Obama’s 45% job approval rating among 18- to 29-year-old whites in 2012 mirrored these voting results closely. But the president’s 11-point drop among white 18- to 29-year-olds since 2012 is almost double the six-point drop among the national population and among older whites.

Younger Whites’ Approval Now Closer to All Other Age Groups

From a broader perspective, there is relatively little difference today in Obama’s job approval ratings among whites in any of the four major age groups. Whites aged 30 to 49, as well as those 65 and older, have given Obama a 31% approval rating so far in 2014, with 50- to 64-year-olds coming in at 32% and 18- to 29-year-olds at 34%. The spread among age categories was slightly larger in the earliest years of the Obama administration.

Support Down, but Still Higher Among Nonwhite Than Among White Young People

Although Obama’s approval rating has dropped among black, Hispanic and Asian 18- to 29-year-olds from 2009 to 2014, just as it has among white millennials, the president maintains a much higher level of support among these groups than among whites. Specifically, Obama’s approval is 80% among young blacks, 68% among young Asians, and 55% among Hispanic 18- to 29-year-olds — contrasted with his 34% approval among white young adults.

Age affects Obama’s approval ratings differently among each of these racial and ethnic groups. Obama does slightly less well among black young people than among older blacks, and significantly better among Asians younger than 50 than among those who are older. There is little significant difference in his approval rating by age within the Hispanic population.

Implications

While Obama is significantly more popular among nonwhites than among whites, he was able to count on proportionately stronger support from young whites than older whites in his 2008 and 2012 presidential election campaigns. Now, his support among white millennials appears to be waning, and these young Americans give Obama an approval rating that is only marginally higher than that among older whites.

These findings demonstrate the general importance of race and ethnicity when one talks about Obama’s job approval ratings by age. Obama continues to enjoy higher approval ratings among all 18- to 29-year-olds — regardless of race or ethnicity — than he does among the general population, but this is largely attributable to younger age groups in the U.S. being disproportionately composed of nonwhites. In other words, a big part of the age gap in Obama’s approval ratings today is attributable not so much to differences in approval within racial or ethnic groups, but to the fact that the white population in the U.S. skews older, while the nonwhite population skews younger.

The white vote has become an increasing challenge for Democratic presidential candidates in recent years, as well as Senate candidates in many Southern and swing states. Just this past weekend, a lack of strong support among white voters was instrumental in incumbent Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s loss in Louisiana’s senatorial runoff election. That loss gives the Republicans control of every southern Senate seat from Texas to the Carolinas. While Democrats are likely to be helped in coming years by a growing Hispanic population, Democratic presidential candidates — and senatorial candidates in many states — will continue to need the votes of a substantial minority of white voters in order to put together a winning coalition. Thus, Obama’s continuing loss of support among younger white voters highlights one of the potential challenges ahead for Democratic candidates in 2016.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey from 2009 through November 2014, with random samples of approximately 355,000 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia for each of the 2009-2012 yearly samples; approximately 175,000 adults for 2013; and 163,847 adults for Jan. 2-Nov. 30, 2014. For results based on the total sample of national adults in each yearly average, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. The margin of sampling error for each year’s age subgroups varies by sample size.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

Bar Chart Data Source: Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS) published by the U. S. Treasury Department. WE DON’T MAKE THIS UP! IT COMES FROM THE U. S. GOVERNMENT! NO ADJUSTMENTS.

The MTS published in October, reports the final actual expenditures for the previous FY. This chart shows FY2014 actual spending data. Here is the link to download your own copy from the Treasury Department web site.

The chart normally shows the proposed budget line for the next fiscal year (FY2015 started 1 October 2014), but Congress has not passed a “budget” for FY2015; we’re still using continuing resolutions to fund the federal government.

The Congressional Budget Office reported on the Federal Debt and the Risk of a Financial Crisis in this report on the non-budget.

NDAC Challenge: Look at the bar chart to find items that are growing and items that are being reduced. Example: One of the largest growth departments is at the Department of Agriculture; it handles Food Stamps (SNAP). You pay taxes, your money is paying for food stamps.

NDAC studies the Budget Proposals submitted to the U.S. Senate each year by the President of the United States and by the House of Representatives. The budget submissions include Budget Historical Tables published by OMB. Expenditures are shown in Table 4.1, scroll way right to find current years actuals and estimates. Our analysis is discussed on the home page of this web site.

— “Deficit” vs. “Debt”—

Suppose you spend more money this month than your income. This situation is called a “budget deficit”. So you borrow (ie; use your credit card). The amount you borrowed (and now owe) is called your debt. You have to pay interest on your debt. If next month you spend more than your income, another deficit, you must borrow some more, and you’ll still have to pay the interest on your debt (now larger). If you have a deficit every month, you keep borrowing and your debt grows. Soon the interest payment on your loan is bigger than any other item in your budget. Eventually, all you can do is pay the interest payment, and you don’t have any money left over for anything else. This situation is known as bankruptcy.

“Reducing the deficit” is a meaningless soundbite. If theDEFICIT is any amount more than ZERO, we have to borrow more and the DEBT grows.

Each year since 1969, Congress has spent more money than its income. The Treasury Department has to borrow money to meet Congress’s appropriations. Here is a direct link to the Congressional Budget Office web site’s deficit analysis. We have to pay interest* on that huge, growing debt; and it dramatically cuts into our budget.

Cut spending??? What would you cut?
[All federal expenses are shown on the chart above].
And there is a lot of missing money! Where is it?

The Treasury Department has the third largest expense in the federal budget. Only Defense andentitlement programs (run by Departments of Health and Human Services, HUD, and Agriculture (food stamps)) spend more. As the debt increases, so does the interest payment. Entitlement spending is the largest item in our federal budget. Do you have “Compassion” for lower income earners?

In FY2013 the U. S. Treasury Department spent$416 Billion of your money on interest payments to the holders of the National Debt.
Compare that to NASA at $17B,
Agriculture at $156B,
Labor at $80B,
Transportation at $76B!Can the federal budget be balanced? Here’s a video about that.

When you buy something, all the companies involved in producing and delivering it, were charged a wide range of taxes, and those costs are part of the price ofeverything you buy. The price of everything you buy will go up to cover any business tax increases.You are paying those corporate taxes! Read more about the proposed Energy Tax increases. So don’t forget that the price of fuel is in the cost of everything.

The “Economic Stimulus” is shifting us from an “economic crisis” to a debt crisis!Consider this; if businesses could print their own money and give it away to customers so they could buy the products, many folks would be happy for a while; but the businesses would go bankrupt. Well, that’s what our government is currently doing, printing and giving away money.

It has been reported that about 50% of Americans pay no income tax. But, if those folks buy anything, they pay “embedded taxes”*. Here is a video about taxation.
*[About 22% of the price of any product you buy is because of taxation on the companies that were involved in that product being produced and being at a place where it could be bought; and that’s before local sales taxes were added.] Every company must cover ALL its costs (including taxation) in the price of its product; or it will go bankrupt.

Healthcare… some proponents want to pay for the new plan by taxing insurance companies.Insurance companies do not pay taxes. To a corporation, tax is just another cost. So policy premiums will go up to cover the cost.

Government Programs always cost more than originally predicted. What about Healthcare?

**The Government cannot provide anything to anyone without first taking money from someone else to pay for it.

NOTABLE QUOTES

“For society as a whole, nothing comes as a ‘right’ to which we are ‘entitled’. Even bare subsistence has to be produced…. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it… The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more the providers have to carry the load.” Thomas Sowell, quoted in Forbes and Reader’s Digest.

According to Mr. Kneeland, “…all dollars come from the people. Where do [you] think Coca-Cola gets the money to pay its taxes, Exxon gets its money to pay the Exxon Valdez fines, Denny’s gets the money to pay its Justice Department fines, or even Microsoft gets the money to defend itself? It all ultimately can come from only one place, and that’s from individuals.” ED: When you buy a product, the price of that product has to cover ALL the costs to get that product to you.

“A politician cannot spend one dime on any spending project without first taking that dime from the person who earned it. So, when a politician votes for a spending bill he is saying that he believes the government should spend that particular dollar rather than the individual who worked for it.” Neal Boortz.

“There is no such thing as government money – only taxpayer money.” William Weld, quoted in Readers Digest.

“Who will provide the roof to protect you from the rain, the heat to comfort you from the cold, and the coffee to fill your stomach when the damn, greedy capitalists are all gone?” – David Berresford, Thursday, May 20, 2010, Canada Free Press.

SOCIAL SECURITYis not part of the Federal Budget (General Fund). It is a separate account from the General Fund, and has its own source of income (“Payroll Tax”). Social Security payments go in the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF), and should NOT be counted as general revenue. The SSTF is supposed to be used to pay benefits. But, the Government is under NO OBLIGATION to pay Social Security benefits, and has even borrowed substantially fromtheSSTF for general operations!As of August 2010, there is less being paid into the Social Security Trust Fund than is being paid out to beneficiaries. Social Security is now using its “surplus”.Other Government agencies borrowed from that trust fund, and now have to pay it back. But they already spent it! So how will they pay it back? Through bailouts and taxes. Here is a “must read” about the problem. Your payroll taxes are going into a bottomless hole!The Social Security Administration’s FAQ page about the Trust Fund, and their latestReport (May 2011) explain it well.Beware the term “Social Security Surplus”; there is no such thing. Social Security is aPonzi Scheme, there is never more in the Trust Fund than will ever be needed.

The Government does not have any money, it does nothing to earn money (maybe defense). Government takes money from you and borrows more (from your children), then spends that! The bailouts of 2008 and 2009 are purely deficit spending. Expect to see enormous deficits in the forseeable future, leading to much more debt.Interest payments on that growing debt will become the largest item in the federal budget. On C-SPAN, President Obama boldly told Americans: “We are out of money.”

In 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created with the duty of preserving the dollar, one 20-dollar bill could buy one 20-dollar gold piece. Today, fifty 20-dollar bills are needed to buy one 20-dollar gold piece. Under the Fed’s custody, the U.S. dollar has lost 98 percent of its value. The dollar is the storehouse of our wealth. Has the Fed faithfully safeguarded that storehouse? Thomas Jefferson said, “In questions of power let us hear no more of trust in men, but bind them down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution.”

Republicans look to strike back after the president’s executive action on immigration.

A perfect storm of historic dysfunction combined with a lame-duck Congress, a looming power change in the Senate, a budget deadline, the holidays and the countdown to the 2016 elections has not prodded lawmakers to make compromises or to do their basic budgetary work. It has, however, led to a brand-new Washington term. Enter the “cromnibus.”

That’s the name being assigned to a tortured GOP strategy to stick it to President Barack Obama and make a bold statement on immigration and border security – all while avoiding shutting down the federal government right before the holidays, a tactic that didn’t work out so well for the GOP when it happened last year.

Described as a trial balloon, the approach was floated by House Speaker John Boehner at the party’s Tuesday morning meeting last week. The GOP plan goes like this: Congress would pass an omnibus funding bill to keep almost the entire government running into September 2015. However, the Department of Homeland Security – the department that deals with the implementation of Obama’s executive action on immigration, which the Republicans hate – would limp along on a mere continuing resolution that would fund it until sometime next March. That would give Republicans time and opportunity to pressure the Obama administration into backing off its executive action somehow – or at least isolate the DHS budget so Republicans, who next year will control both the House and Senate, could deny the funds needed to implement the action. Meanwhile, House members were given a chance, before recessing for the year, to take what is widely regarded as a show vote to undo the executive action.

This way, lawmakers explained, House Republicans can vent about border security, Obama and the use of an executive action to grant temporary legal status to more than 4 million people in the country illegally, all without suffering the political consequences of another government shutdown.

Boehner acknowledged that there’s no easy way for congressional Republicans to undo Obama’s executive action; rank-and-file members have thrown around ideas ranging from refusing to provide funds to implement the action to a lawsuit or impeachment.

Each has its logistical and political complications: Refusing to fund Homeland Security could make Republicans look like they don’t care about the safety of the nation’s citizens; a lawsuit (even if the House is deemed to have standing to sue) could cause a political backlash; and impeachment could lead to a repeat of 1998, when a similar action against former President Bill Clinton backfired against the GOP.

In countering Obama on immigration, the GOP has to weigh the interests of the Hispanic community against the ideals of the party’s base.

And Republicans must be mindful of two important constituencies in 2016 – the GOP base, which wants the action undone and might reject a presidential primary candidate who won’t commit to doing so, and the Hispanic community, which might align itself even more firmly against Republicans if the GOP commits to a policy that would break up families living here with temporary legal status.

“We’re looking at a variety of options, both for right now and when Republicans control both houses of the Congress next year,” Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters. “Frankly, we have limited options and limited abilities to deal with it directly.”

Thus, GOP strategists have proposed the “cromnibus,” a compromise that would keep nearly all agencies and programs humming along until next September (since Congress has been unable to pass any of the appropriations bills that make up the federal budget) and avoid a government shutdown that would occur if nothing is done before the current continuing resolution expires Dec. 11.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security would be put on a short budgetary leash until March. By that point, Republicans reason, they will be running both chambers of Congress and will be able to pass legislation excising funding for the part of the department that deals with the new executive action, killing it by starvation.

“The most effective thing we can do is to limit spending,” says Rep. John Fleming, R-La. While Fleming says Obama is assuming excessive powers as the nation’s chief executive, “we’ve got our own power – the power of the purse,” he adds.

But Fleming, like some other House conservatives, is irked by the idea that the House should wait until next year to go full-force against the immigration action – meaning Boehner may need House Democrats to get such a plan approved.

The simmering rebellion by House conservatives means Boehner is likely to continue to face the same internal divisions he’s had since 2011, when a wave of new tea party-aligned lawmakers gave the GOP the House majority and demanded a rightward turn in the way the party ran things. That pressure largely drove the 16-day government shutdown in October 2013 – a development polls showed Americans blamed on Republicans. So would the public also blame the GOP if Homeland Security does not get the cash it needs to keep Americans safe?

“Republicans are blamed for everything, anyway – what difference does it make?” Fleming says.

However, Senate Democrats are determined not to end their reign with a shutdown, even if the GOP gets blamed for it. Getting almost all of the government funded until next fall would be “a big accomplishment,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters.

Moreover, the GOP needs to worry about overreach, Democrats say. Any specific effort to undo the executive action is likely to be vetoed by Obama. That leaves Republicans in the same position as they were with the Affordable Care Act. They could hold a series of votes opposing it or defunding it, but none would get signed into law. And the difference with immigration, notes Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., is that the substance of the order (as opposed to the process) is indeed popular with the public, in a way Obamacare is not.

Opposing Obama’s order as executive overreach might excite the GOP base, but Hispanic families are equally excited about the opportunity to stay intact in the U.S., he adds. For Boehner, the challenge may be keeping his Republican family united.

Urgent Issue Of Immigration & The Budget – Special Report 1st Segment

Americans: In Obama we don’t trust

***AMERICANS DONT TRUST THE GOVERNMENT *** there criminals.

Top 10 Government Lies – When said ‘Trust Us’

Krauthammer on Obama: American “People Think This Is Failed Presidency”

Why Shouldn’t I Work for the NSA? (Good Will Hunting)

U.S. Drones kill more people than ISIS: Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges, author, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and polemicist discusses the importance of resistance to empire, and passionately condemns US foreign policy, saying “There is no difference between a beheading by ISIL and a US drone strike.”

EXPLAINED: Why Obama is Authorizing up to 5 Million Illegals

Obama’s Executive Order on Immigration Is Unlikely to Include Health Benefits

Oath of office of the President of the United States

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The Constitution of the United States

Excerpts

Article. I.

Section. 1.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in aCongress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Article. 2.

Section. 1.

The executive Powershall be vested in aPresident of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

Section. 3.

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Section. 4.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article. IV.

Section. 4.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Uniona Republican Form of Government, and shallprotect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.

GOP senator warns of violence after immigration order

Susan Page

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn warns there could be not only a political firestorm but acts of civil disobedience and even violence in reaction to President Obama’s executive order on immigration Thursday.

“The country’s going to go nuts, because they’re going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it’s going to be a very serious situation,” Coburn said on Capital Download. “You’re going to see — hopefully not — but you could see instances of anarchy. … You could see violence.”

Coburn, 66, is a conservative Republican but one who has a personal relationship with Obama. They entered the Senate in the same class, elected in 2004, and the new senators from opposite ends of the political spectrum and their spouses immediately hit it off at an orientation dinner. Last year, the president wrote a tribute in Time magazine to Coburn as “someone who speaks his mind (and) sticks to his principles.”

That history gives Coburn’s stark assessment a special sting. On immigration, he accuses Obama of acting like “an autocratic leader that’s going to disregard what the Constitution says and make law anyway.” He says changes in immigration policy require passage by Congress, not just the president’s signature — a charge the White House disputes and on which legal experts disagree.

“Instead of having the rule of law handling in our country today, now we’re starting to have the rule of rulers, and that’s the total antithesis of what this country was founded on,” Coburn says. “Here’s how people think: Well, if the law doesn’t apply to the president … then why should it apply to me?”

Coburn, who also served three terms in the House of Representatives, is retiring two years before his second Senate term is up as he battles a recurrence of cancer. He has been a leading deficit hawk, nicknamed “Dr. No” for his steadfast opposition to spending and his blunt-spoken manner.

Though he says both parties deserve some of the blame for Washington’s dysfunction, he argues that the president has the ability to chart a different path. Solid Republican control of Congress in the wake of this month’s midterm elections could make it easier to deal with an issue such as the structural problems associated with the deficit. Making the compromises necessary for that “requires divided government,” he says.

“If I were in his office, I’d say, if you want to have a successful second term, dig down, swallow your pride, get what you can get, compromise on everything you can for the best interests of the country,” he says. “Bring us back together.”

Obama’s immigration speech Thursday night

Nov 20, 12:51 PM (ET)

By JIM KUHNHENN and ERICA WERNER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is poised to claim broad authority to grant work permits to millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States and to protect them from deportation. But Republicans are vowing an all-out fight against it.

Obama “will come to regret” his action, McConnell said. “We’re considering a variety of options. But make no mistake. When the newly elected representatives of the people take their seats, they will act.”

Obama’s measures could make as many as 5 million people eligible for work permits, with the broadest action likely aimed at extending deportation protections to parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, as long as those parents have been in the country for at least five years.

Other potential winners under Obama’s actions would be young immigrants who entered the country illegally as children but do not now qualify under a 2012 directive from the president that’s expected to be expanded. Changes also are expected to law enforcement programs and business visas.However, the plan would leave the fate of millions more unresolved. With more than 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally, Obama’s actions would not offer specific protections to more than half.

Still, Obama was expected to ensure that many of those not covered — immigrants who have lived illegally in the U.S. for 10 years or more or parents of citizens or permanent residents who have been in the country fewer than five years — would be given a lower priority for deportation, essentially sanctioning what is already current practice.

“What I’m going to be laying out is the things that I can do with my lawful authority as president to make the system better, even as I continue to work with Congress and encourage them to get a bipartisan, comprehensive bill that can solve the entire problem,” Obama said in a video posted Wednesday on Facebook.

On Thursday, Obama discussed the need for an overhaul of the immigration system in the context of science and technology, saying the U.S. benefits from innovations and discoveries by scientists and researchers who come here to pursue their work.

“Part of staying competitive in a global economy is making sure we have an immigration

system that doesn’t send away talent but attracts it,” Obama said at a White House ceremony recognizing achievements in science, technology and innovation. “So that’s what I’ll be talking about a little bit tonight.”But the vehement reactions of Republicans, who will have control of Congress come January, made clear that Obama was courting a serious partisan confrontation.

Some on the right pushed for using must-pass spending legislation to try to stop Obama’s effort. One lawmaker — Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama — raised the specter of impeachment.

Party leaders warned against such talk and sought to avoid spending-bill tactics that could lead to a government shutdown. They said such moves could backfire, alienating Hispanic voters and others.

In a closed-door meeting with other Senate Republicans, McConnell urged restraint. Still, there were concerns among some Republicans that the potential 2016 presidential candidates in the Senate would use the announcement to elevate their standing, challenging Obama directly.

And as far-reaching as Obama’s steps would be, they fall far short of what a comprehensive immigration overhaul passed by the Senate last year would have accomplished. The House never voted on that legislation. It would have set tougher border security standards, increased caps for visas for foreign high-skilled workers and allowed the 11 million immigrants illegally in the country to obtain work permits and begin a 10-year path toward green cards and, ultimately, citizenship.

“This is not the way we want to proceed. It will not solve the problem permanently,” White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri said Thursday on MSNBC.

None of those affected by Obama’s actions would have a direct path to citizenship, and his actions could be reversed by a new president after he leaves office. Moreover, officials said the eligible immigrants would not be entitled to federal benefits — including health care tax credits — under Obama’s plan.

Some immigrant advocates worried that even though Obama’s actions would make millions eligible for work permits, not all would participate out of fear that Republicans or a new president would reverse the executive orders.

“If the reaction to this is that the Republicans are going to do everything they can to tear this apart, to make it unworkable, the big interesting question will be, will our folks sign up knowing that there is this cloud hanging over it,” said Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza.

“The last two weeks haven’t been great weeks for us,” said Rep. Joe Crowley of New York, one of 18 congressional Democrats who had dinner Wednesday night with Obama. “The president is about to change that.”

Frank Sinatra-New York,New York

Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York
These vagabond shoes, are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it
New York, New YorkI want to wake up, in a city that never sleeps
And find I’m king of the hill
Top of the heapThese little town blues, are melting awayEbola Theme Song — New York, New York
I’ll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere
It’s up to you, New York..New YorkNew York…New York
I want to wake up, in a city that never sleeps
And find I’m A number one, top of the list
King of the hill, A number one….These little town blues, are melting away
I’ll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere
It’s up to you, New York..New York New York!!!

Frank Sinatra – New York New York Song **Lyrics** [HD]

Frank Sinatra, My Way, With Lyrics

“My Way”

And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and ev’ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my wayRegrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this, I did it my wayYes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my wayI’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
“Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way”For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way![instrumental]Yes, it was my way

Frank Sinatra – “It Was A Very Good Year”

“It Was A Very Good Year”

[spoken intro:]
Here’s an awfully pretty folk songWhen I was seventeen it was a very good year
It was a very good year for small town girls and soft summer nights
We’d hide from the lights on the village green
When I was seventeen[brief instrumental]When I was twenty-one it was a very good year
It was a very good year for city girls who lived up the stair
With all that perfumed hair and it came undone
When I was twenty-one[brief instrumental]Then I was thirty-five it was a very good year
It was a very good year for blue-blooded girls
Of independent means, we’d ride in limousines their chauffeurs would drive
When I was thirty-five[brief instrumental]But now the days grow short, I’m in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs, and it poured sweet and clear
It was a very good year[brief instrumental]It was a mess of good years

Frank Sinatra – It Was A Very Good Year Medley Mix – Live

CHICAGO My Kind Of Town – Frank Sinatra

“My Kind Of Town”

Now this could only happen to a guy like me
And only happen in a town like this
So may I say to each of you most gratef’lly
As I throw each one of you a kissThis is my kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of people, too
People who smile at youAnd each time I roam, Chicago is
Calling me home, Chicago is
Why I just grin like a clown
It’s my kind of town[brief instrumental]My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of razzmatazz
And it has all that jazzAnd each time I leave, Chicago is
Tuggin’ my sleeve, Chicago is
The Wrigley Building, Chicago is
The Union Stockyard, Chicago is
One town that won’t let you down
It’s my kind of town

Story 1: NSA Metadata To Be Held By Telephone Companies — Great Distraction — Still Collecting and Intercepting All Americans Telephone Calls and All Information Transmitted Over The Internet and Telephone Exchanges — Stop Deceiving The American People Mr. President — Videos

Obama: NSA Proposal Satisfies Public Concerns

Obama announces overhaul of NSA metadata collection

NSA – Changes To Metadata Program – Special Report All Star

President Obama Names Michael Rogers As New Head Of The NSA

Background Articles and Videos

Through a PRISM, Darkly – Everything we know about NSA spying [30c3]

Published on Dec 30, 2013

Through a PRISM, Darkly
Everything we know about NSA spying

From Stellar Wind to PRISM, Boundless Informant to EvilOlive, the NSA spying programs are shrouded in secrecy and rubber-stamped by secret opinions from a court that meets in a faraday cage. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Kurt Opsahl explains the known facts about how the programs operate and the laws and regulations the U.S. government asserts allows the NSA to spy on you.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil society organization, has been litigating against the NSA spying program for the better part of a decade. EFF has collected and reviewed dozens of documents, from the original NY Times stories in 2005 and the first AT&T whistleblower in 2006, through the latest documents released in the Guardian or obtained through EFF’s Freedom of Information (government transparency) litigation. EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl’s lecture will describe how the NSA spying program works, the underlying technologies, the targeting procedures (how they decide who to focus on), the minimization procedures (how they decide which information to discard), and help you makes sense of the many code names and acronyms in the news. He will also discuss the legal and policy ramifications that have become part of the public debate following the recent disclosures, and what you can do about it. After summarizing the programs, technologies, and legal/policy framework in the lecture, the audience can ask questions.

Glenn Becks “SURVEILLANCE STATE”

Inside the NSA

Ed Snowden, NSA, and Fairy Tales

AT&T Spying On Internet Traffic

For years the National Securities Agency, has been spying on each & every keystroke. The national headquarters of AT&T is in Missouri, where ex-employees describe a secret room. The program is called “Splitter Cut-In & Test Procedure.”

NSA Whistle-Blower Tells All – Op-Docs: The Program

The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.

NSA Whistleblower: Everyone in US under virtual surveillance, all info stored, no matter the post

He told you so: Bill Binney talks NSA leaks

William Benny – The Government is Profiling You (The NSA is Spying on You)

‘After 9/11 NSA had secret deal with White House’

The story of Whistleblower Thomas Drake

Whistleblowers, Part Two: Thomas Drake

NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake speaks at National Press Club – March 15, 2013

Meet Edward Snowden: NSA PRISM Whistleblower

The Truth About Edward Snowden

N.S.A. Spying: Why Does It Matter?

Inside The NSA~Americas Cyber Secrets

NSA Whistleblower Exposes Obama’s Dragnet

AT&T whistleblower against immunity for Bush spy program-1/2

AT&T Whistleblower Urges Against Immunity for Telecoms in Bush Spy Program

The Senate is expected to vote on a controversial measure to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act tomorrow. The legislation would rewrite the nation’s surveillance laws and authorize the National Security Agency’s secret program of warrantless wiretapping. We speak with Mark Klein, a technician with AT&T for over twenty-two years. In 2006 Klein leaked internal AT&T documents that revealed the company had set up a secret room in its San Francisco office to give the National Security Agency access to its fiber optic internet cables.

AT&T whistleblower against immunity for Bush spy program-2/2

Enemy Of The State 1998 (1080p) (Full movie)

Background Articles and Videos

Stellar Wind

Stellar Wind was the open secret code name for four surveillance programs by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) during the presidency of George W. Bush and revealed by Thomas Tamm to The New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.[1] The operation was approved by President George W. Bush shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001.[2] Stellar Wind was succeeded during the presidency of Barack Obama by four major lines of intelligence collection in the territorial United States, together capable of spanning the full range of modern telecommunications.[3]

The program’s activities involved data mining of a large database of the communications of American citizens, including e-mail communications, phone conversations, financial transactions, and Internet activity.[1] William Binney, a retired Technical Leader with the NSA, discussed some of the architectural and operational elements of the program at the 2012 Chaos Communication Congress.[4]

There were internal disputes within the Justice Department about the legality of the program, because data are collected for large numbers of people, not just the subjects of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants.[4]

During the Bush Administration, the Stellar Wind cases were referred to by FBI agents as “pizza cases” because many seemingly suspicious cases turned out to be food takeout orders. According to Mueller, approximately 99 percent of the cases led nowhere, but “it’s that other 1% that we’ve got to be concerned about”.[2] One of the known uses of these data were the creation of suspicious activity reports, or “SARS”, about people suspected of terrorist activities. It was one of these reports that revealed former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s use of prostitutes, even though he was not suspected of terrorist activities.[1]

In March 2012 Wired magazine published “The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)” talking about a vast new NSA facility in Utah and says “For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail,” naming the official William Binney, a former NSA code breaker. Binney went on to say that the NSA had highly secured rooms that tap into major switches, and satellite communications at both AT&T and Verizon.[5] The article suggested that the otherwise dispatched Stellar Wind is actually an active program.

PRISM

PRISM is a clandestine national security electronic surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007.[1][2][3][Notes 1]PRISM is a government codename for a data collection effort known officially as US-984XN.[8][9] It is operated under the supervision of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).[10] The existence of the program was leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6, 2013.

A document included in the leak indicated that the PRISM SIGAD was “the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports.”[11] The President’s Daily Brief, an all-source intelligence product, cited PRISM data as a source in 1,477 items in 2012.[12] The leaked information came to light one day after the revelation that the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been requiring the telecommunications company Verizon to turn over to the NSA logs tracking all of its customers’ telephone calls on an ongoing daily basis.[13][14]

According to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, PRISM cannot be used to intentionally target any Americans or anyone in the United States. Clapper said a special court, Congress, and the executive branch oversee the program and extensive procedures ensure the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of data accidentally collected about Americans is kept to a minimum.[15] Clapper issued a statement and “fact sheet”[16] to correct what he characterized as “significant misimpressions” in articles by The Washington Post and The Guardian newspapers.[17]

History

Slide showing that much of the world’s communications flow through the US

Details of information collected via PRISM

PRISM is a “Special Source Operation” in the tradition of NSA’s intelligence alliances with as many as 100 trusted U.S. companies since the 1970s.[1] A prior program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, was implemented in the wake of the September 11 attacks under the George W. Bush Administration but was widely criticized and had its legality questioned, because it was conducted without approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).[18][19][20][21] PRISM was authorized by an order of the FISC.[11] Its creation was enabled by the Protect America Act of 2007 under President Bush and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which legally immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with US intelligence collection and was renewed by Congress under President Obama in 2012 for five years until December 2017.[2][22] According to The Register, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 “specifically authorizes intelligence agencies to monitor the phone, email, and other communications of U.S. citizens for up to a week without obtaining a warrant” when one of the parties is outside the U.S.[22]

PRISM was first publicly revealed on June 6, 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Washington Post and The Guardian by American Edward Snowden.[2][1] The leaked documents included 41 PowerPoint slides, four of which were published in news articles.[1][2] The documents identified several technology companies as participants in the PRISM program, including (date of joining PRISM in parentheses) Microsoft (2007), Yahoo! (2008), Google (2009), Facebook (2009), Paltalk (2009), YouTube (2010), AOL (2011), Skype (2011), and Apple (2012).[23] The speaker’s notes in the briefing document reviewed by The Washington Post indicated that “98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft.”[1]

The slide presentation stated that much of the world’s electronic communications pass through the United States, because electronic communications data tend to follow the least expensive route rather than the most physically direct route, and the bulk of the world’s internet infrastructure is based in the United States.[11] The presentation noted that these facts provide United States intelligence analysts with opportunities for intercepting the communications of foreign targets as their electronic data pass into or through the United States.[2][11]

According to The Washington Post, the intelligence analysts search PRISM data using terms intended to identify suspicious communications of targets whom the analysts suspect with at least 51 percent confidence to not be United States citizens, but in the process, communication data of some United States citizens are also collected unintentionally.[1] Training materials for analysts tell them that while they should periodically report such accidental collection of non-foreign United States data, “it’s nothing to worry about.”[1]

Response from companies

The original Washington Post and Guardian articles reporting on PRISM noted that one of the leaked briefing documents said PRISM involves collection of data “directly from the servers” of several major internet services providers.[2][1]

Initial Public Statements

Corporate executives of several companies identified in the leaked documents told The Guardian that they had no knowledge of the PRISM program in particular and also denied making information available to the government on the scale alleged by news reports.[2][24] Statements of several of the companies named in the leaked documents were reported by TechCrunch and The Washington Post as follows:[25][26]

Slide listing companies and the date that PRISM collection began

Microsoft: “We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.”[25]

Yahoo!: “Yahoo! takes users’ privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.”[25] “Of the hundreds of millions of users we serve, an infinitesimal percentage will ever be the subject of a government data collection directive.”[26]

Facebook: “We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.”[25]

Google: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data.”[25] “[A]ny suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.”[26]

Apple: “We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order.”[27]

Dropbox: “We’ve seen reports that Dropbox might be asked to participate in a government program called PRISM. We are not part of any such program and remain committed to protecting our users’ privacy.”[25]

In response to the technology companies’ denials of the NSA being able to directly access the companies’ servers, The New York Times reported that sources had stated the NSA was gathering the surveillance data from the companies using other technical means in response to court orders for specific sets of data.[13]The Washington Post suggested, “It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing ‘collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,’ rather than directly to company servers.”[1] “[I]n context, ‘direct’ is more likely to mean that the NSA is receiving data sent to them deliberately by the tech companies, as opposed to intercepting communications as they’re transmitted to some other destination.[26]

“If these companies received an order under the FISA amendments act, they are forbidden by law from disclosing having received the order and disclosing any information about the order at all,” Mark Rumold, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told ABC News.[28]

Slide showing two different sources of NSA data collection. The first source the fiber optic cables of the internet handled by the Upstream program and the second source the servers of major internet companies handled by PRISM.[29]

On May 28, 2013, Google was ordered by United States District Court Judge Susan Illston to comply with a National Security Letter issued by the FBI to provide user data without a warrant.[30] Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an interview with VentureBeat said, “I certainly appreciate that Google put out a transparency report, but it appears that the transparency didn’t include this. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were subject to a gag order.”[31]

The New York Times reported on June 7, 2013, that “Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations.”[32] The other companies held discussions with national security personnel on how to make data available more efficiently and securely.[32] In some cases, these companies made modifications to their systems in support of the intelligence collection effort.[32] The dialogues have continued in recent months, as General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has met with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel.[32] These details on the discussions provide insight into the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program including a training slide which states “Collection directly from the servers”[29] and the companies’ denials.[32]

While providing data in response to a legitimate FISA request approved by FISC is a legal requirement, modifying systems to make it easier for the government to collect the data is not. This is why Twitter could legally decline to provide an enhanced mechanism for data transmission.[32] Other than Twitter, the companies were effectively asked to construct a locked mailbox and provide the key to the government, people briefed on the negotiations said.[32] Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information.[32] Google does not provide a lockbox system, but instead transmits required data by hand delivery or secure FTP.[33]

Post-PRISM Transparency Reports

In response to the publicity surrounding media reports of data-sharing, several companies requested permission to reveal more public information about the nature and scope of information provided in response to National Security requests.

On June 14, 2013, Facebook reported that the U.S. Government had authorized the communication of “about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range.” In a press release posted to their web site, Facebook reported, “For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000.” Facebook further reported that the requests impacted “between 18,000 and 19,000″ user accounts, a “tiny fraction of one percent” of more than 1.1 billion active user accounts.[34]

Microsoft reported that for the same period, it received “between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from U.S. governmental entities (including local, state and federal)” which impacted “a tiny fraction of Microsoft’s global customer base”.[35]

Google issued a statement criticizing the requirement that data be reported in aggregated form, stating that lumping national security requests with criminal request data would be “a step backwards” from its previous, more detailed practices on its site transparency report. The company said that it would continue to seek government permission to publish the number and extent of FISA requests.[36]

Response from United States government

Executive branch

Shortly after publication of the reports by The Guardian and The Washington Post, the United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, on June 7 released a statement confirming that for nearly six years the government of the United States had been using large internet services companies such as Google and Facebook to collect information on foreigners outside the United States as a defense against national security threats.[13] The statement read in part, “The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies.”[37] He went on to say, “Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States.”[37] Clapper concluded his statement by stating “The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.”[37] On March 12, 2013, Clapper had told the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA does “not wittingly” collect any type of data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.[38] In an NBC News interview, Clapper said he answered Senator Wyden’s question in the “least untruthful manner by saying no”.[39]

Clapper also stated that “the NSA collects the phone data in broad swaths, because collecting it (in) a narrow fashion would make it harder to identify terrorism-related communications. The information collected lets the government, over time, make connections about terrorist activities. The program doesn’t let the U.S. listen to people’s calls, but only includes information like call length and telephone numbers dialed.”[15]

On June 8, 2013, Clapper said “the surveillance activities published in The Guardian and The Washington Post are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress.”[40][10] The fact sheet described PRISM as “an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a).”[10]

The National Intelligence fact sheet further stated that “the United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.” It said that the Attorney General provides FISA Court rulings and semi-annual reports about PRISM activities to Congress, “provid[ing] an unprecedented degree of accountability and transparency.”[10]

The President of the United States, Barack Obama, said on June 7 “What you’ve got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress. Bipartisan majorities have approved them. Congress is continually briefed on how these are conducted. There are a whole range of safeguards involved. And federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout.”[41] He also said, “You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”[41]

In separate statements, senior (not mentioned by name in source) Obama administration officials said that Congress had been briefed 13 times on the programs since 2009.[42]

Legislative branch

In contrast to their swift and forceful reactions the previous day to allegations that the government had been conducting surveillance of United States citizens’ telephone records, Congressional leaders initially had little to say about the PRISM program the day after leaked information about the program was published. Several lawmakers declined to discuss PRISM, citing its top-secret classification,[43] and others said that they had not been aware of the program.[44] After statements had been released by the President and the Director of National Intelligence, some lawmakers began to comment:

Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

June 9 “We passed the Patriot Act. We passed specific provisions of the act that allowed for this program to take place, to be enacted in operation,”[45]

June 9 “These programs are within the law”, “part of our obligation is keeping Americans safe”, “Human intelligence isn’t going to do it”.[46]

June 9 “Here’s the rub: the instances where this has produced good — has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks, is all classified, that’s what’s so hard about this.”[47]

June 11 “It went fine…we asked him[ Keith Alexander ] to declassify things because it would be helpful (for people and lawmakers to better understand the intelligence programs).” “I’ve just got to see if the information gets declassified. I’m sure people will find it very interesting.”[48]

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), member of Senate Intelligence Committee and past member of Homeland Security Committee

June 11 “I had, along with Joe Lieberman, a monthly threat briefing, but I did not have access to this highly compartmentalized information” and “How can you ask when you don’t know the program exists?”[49]

Representative John Boehner (R-OH), Speaker of the House of Representatives

June 9, “This is well beyond what the Patriot Act allows.”[51] “President Obama’s claim that ‘this is the most transparent administration in history’ has once again proven false. In fact, it appears that no administration has ever peered more closely or intimately into the lives of innocent Americans.”[51]

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI), a Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

June 9 “One of the things that we’re charged with is keeping America safe and keeping our civil liberties and privacy intact. I think we have done both in this particular case,”[46]

June 9 “Within the last few years this program was used to stop a program, excuse me, to stop a terrorist attack in the United States we know that. It’s, it’s, it’s important, it fills in a little seam that we have and it’s used to make sure that there is not an international nexus to any terrorism event that they may believe is ongoing in the United States. So in that regard it is a very valuable thing,”[52]

Senator Mark Udall (D-CO)

June 9 “I don’t think the American public knows the extent or knew the extent to which they were being surveilled and their data was being collected.” “I think we ought to reopen the Patriot Act and put some limits on the amount of data that the National Security (Agency) is collecting,” “It ought to remain sacred, and there’s got to be a balance here. That is what I’m aiming for. Let’s have the debate, let’s be transparent, let’s open this up”.[46]

Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN)

June 10 “We have no idea when they [ FISA ] meet, we have no idea what their judgments are”,[53]

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)

June 6 “When the Senate rushed through a last-minute extension of the FISA Amendments Act late last year, I insisted on a vote on my amendment (SA 3436) to require stronger protections on business records and prohibiting the kind of data-mining this case has revealed. Just last month, I introduced S.1037, the Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act,”[54]

June 9 “I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I’m going to be asking the Internet providers and all of the phone companies: ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit.”[45]

Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)

June 9 “We will be receiving secret briefings and we will be asking, I know I’m going to be asking to get more information. I want to make sure that what they’re doing is harvesting information that is necessary to keep us safe and not simply going into everybody’s private telephone conversations and Facebook and communications. I mean one of the, you know the terrorists win when you debilitate freedom of expression and privacy.”[52]

Judicial branch

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has not acknowledged, denied or confirmed any involvement in the PRISM program at this time. It has not issued any press statement or release relating to the current situation and uncertainty.

Applicable law and practice

On June 8, 2013, the Director of National Intelligence issued a fact sheet stating that PRISM “is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program”, but rather computer software used to facilitate the collection of foreign intelligence information “under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a).”[10] Section 702 provides that “the Attorney General [A.G.] and the Director of National Intelligence [DNI] may authorize jointly, for a period of up to 1 year from the effective date of the authorization, the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.”[55] In order to authorize the targeting, the A.G. and DNI need to get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) pursuant to Section 702 or certify that “intelligence important to the national security of the United States may be lost or not timely acquired and time does not permit the issuance of an order.”[55] When asking for an order, the A.G. and DNI must certify to FISC that “a significant purpose of the acquisition is to obtain foreign intelligence information.”[55] They do not need to specify which facilities or property that the targeting will be directed at.[55]

After getting a FISC order or determining that there are emergency circumstances, the A.G. and DNI can direct an electronic communication service provider to give them access to information or facilities to carry out the targeting and keep the targeting secret.[55] The provider then has the option to: (1) comply with the directive; (2) reject it; or (3) challenge it to FISC.

If the provider complies with the directive, it is released from liability to its users for providing the information and reimbursed for the cost of providing it.[55]

If the provider rejects the directive, the A.G. may request an order from FISC to enforce it.[55] A provider that fails to comply with FISC’s order can be punished with contempt of court.[55]

Finally, a provider can petition FISC to reject the directive.[55] In case FISC denies the petition and orders the provider to comply with the directive, the provider risks contempt of court if it refuses to comply with FISC’s order.[55] The provider can appeal FISC’s denial to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and then appeal the Court of Review’s decision to the Supreme Court by a writ of certiorari for review under seal.[55]

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the FISA Courts had been put in place to oversee intelligence operations in the period after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Beverly Gage of Slate said, “When they were created, these new mechanisms were supposed to stop the kinds of abuses that men like Hoover had engineered. Instead, it now looks as if they have come to function as rubber stamps for the expansive ambitions of the intelligence community. J. Edgar Hoover no longer rules Washington, but it turns out we didn’t need him anyway.”[56]

Involvement of other countries

Australia

The Australian government has said it will investigate the impact of the PRISM program and the use of the Pine Gap surveillance facility on the privacy of Australian citizens.[57]

Canada

Canada’s national cryptologic agency, the Communications Security Establishment, said that commenting on PRISM “would undermine CSE’s ability to carry out its mandate”. Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart lamented Canada’s standards when it comes to protecting personal online privacy stating “We have fallen too far behind,” Stoddart wrote in her report. “While other nations’ data protection authorities have the legal power to make binding orders, levy hefty fines and take meaningful action in the event of serious data breaches, we are restricted to a ‘soft’ approach: persuasion, encouragement and, at the most, the potential to publish the names of transgressors in the public interest.” And, “when push comes to shove,” Stoddart wrote, “short of a costly and time-consuming court battle, we have no power to enforce our recommendations.”[58]

Germany

Germany did not receive any raw PRISM data, according to a Reuters report.[59]

Israel

Israeli newspaper Calcalist discussed[60] the Business Insider article[61] about the possible involvement of technologies from two secretive Israeli companies in the PRISM program – Verint Systems and Narus.

New Zealand

In New Zealand, University of Otago information science Associate Professor Hank Wolfe said that “under what was unofficially known as the Five Eyes Alliance, New Zealand and other governments, including the United States, Australia, Canada, and Britain, dealt with internal spying by saying they didn’t do it. But they have all the partners doing it for them and then they share all the information.”[62]

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has had access to the PRISM program on or before June 2010 and wrote 197 reports with it in 2012 alone. PRISM may have allowed GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to seek personal material.[63][64]

Domestic response

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (June 2013)

The New York Times editorial board charged that the Obama administration “has now lost all credibility on this issue,”[65] and lamented that “for years, members of Congress ignored evidence that domestic intelligence-gathering had grown beyond their control, and, even now, few seem disturbed to learn that every detail about the public’s calling and texting habits now reside in a N.S.A. database.”[66]

Republican and former member of Congress Ron Paul said, “We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk…. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.”[67] Paul denounced the government’s secret surveillance program: “The government does not need to know more about what we are doing…. We need to know more about what the government is doing.”[67] He called Congress “derelict in giving that much power to the government,” and said that had he been elected president, he would have ordered searches only when there was probable cause of a crime having been committed, which he said was not how the PRISM program was being operated.[68]

In response to Obama administration arguments that it could stop terrorism in the cases of Najibullah Zazi and David Headley, Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt of The Guardian said in regards to the role of PRISM and Boundless Informant interviews with parties involved in the Zazi scheme and court documents lodged in the United States and the United Kingdom indicated that “conventional” surveillance methods such as “old-fashioned tip-offs” of the British intelligence services initiated the investigation into the Zazi case.[69] An anonymous former CIA agent said that in regards to the Headley case, “That’s nonsense. It played no role at all in the Headley case. That’s not the way it happened at all.”[69] Pilkington and Watt concluded that the data-mining programs “played a relatively minor role in the interception of the two plots.”[69] Michael Daly of The Daily Beast stated that even though Tamerlan Tsarnaev had visited Inspire and even though Russian intelligence officials alerted U.S. intelligence officials about Tsarnaev, PRISM did not prevent him from carrying out the Boston bombings, and that the initial evidence implicating him came from his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and not from federal intelligence. In addition Daly pointed to the fact that Faisal Shahzad visited Inspire but that federal authorities did not stop his attempted terrorist plot. Daly concluded “The problem is not just what the National Security Agency is gathering at the risk of our privacy but what it is apparently unable to monitor at the risk of our safety.”[70] In addition, political commentator Bill O’Reilly criticized the government, saying that PRISM did not stop the Boston bombings.[71]

In a blog post, David Simon, the creator of The Wire, compared the NSA’s programs, including PRISM, to a 1980s effort by the City of Baltimore to add dialed number recorders to all pay phones to know which individuals were being called by the callers;[72] the city believed that drug traffickers were using pay phones and pagers, and a municipal judge allowed the city to place the recorders. The placement of the dialers formed the basis of the show’s first season. Simon argued that the media attention regarding the NSA programs is a “faux scandal.”[72][73] George Takei, an actor who had experienced Japanese American internment, said that due to his memories of the internment, he felt concern towards the NSA surveillance programs that had been revealed.[74]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an international non-profit digital-rights group based in the U.S., is hosting a tool, by which an American resident can write to their government representatives regarding their opposition to mass spying.[75]

On June 11, 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the NSA citing that PRISM “violates Americans’ constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy”.[76]

International response

Reactions of Internet users in China were mixed between viewing a loss of freedom worldwide and seeing state surveillance coming out of secrecy. The story broke just before US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in California.[77][78] When asked about NSA hacking China, the spokeswoman of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China said “China strongly advocates cybersecurity”.[79] The party-owned newspaper Liberation Daily described this surveillance like Nineteen Eighty-Four-style.[80] Hong Kong legislators Gary Fan and Claudia Mo wrote a letter to Obama, stating “the revelations of blanket surveillance of global communications by the world’s leading democracy have damaged the image of the U.S. among freedom-loving peoples around the world.”[81]

Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament, called PRISM “a violation of EU laws”.[82]

Protests at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin

The German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Peter Schaar, condemned the program as “monstrous”.[83] He further added that White House claims do “not reassure me at all” and that “given the large number of German users of Google, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft services, I expect the German government […] is committed to clarification and limitation of surveillance.” Steffen Seibert, press secretary of the Chancellor’s office, announced that Angela Merkel will put these issues on the agenda of the talks with Barack Obama during his pending visit in Berlin.[84]

The Italian president of the Guarantor for the protection of personal data, Antonello Soro, said that the surveillance dragnet “would not be legal in Italy” and would be “contrary to the principles of our legislation and would represent a very serious violation”.[85]

William Hague, the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, dismissed accusations that British security agencies had been circumventing British law by using information gathered on British citizens by Prism[86] saying, “Any data obtained by us from the United States involving UK nationals is subject to proper UK statutory controls and safeguards.”[86] David Cameron said Britain’s spy agencies that received data collected from PRISM acted within the law: “I’m satisfied that we have intelligence agencies that do a fantastically important job for this country to keep us safe, and they operate within the law.”[86][87] Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, said that if the British intelligence agencies were seeking to know the content of emails about people living in the UK, then they actually have to get lawful authority.[87] The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office was more cautious, saying it would investigate PRISM alongside other European data agencies: “There are real issues about the extent to which U.S. law agencies can access personal data of UK and other European citizens. Aspects of U.S. law under which companies can be compelled to provide information to U.S. agencies potentially conflict with European data protection law, including the UK’s own Data Protection Act. The ICO has raised this with its European counterparts, and the issue is being considered by the European Commission, who are in discussions with the U.S. Government.”[82]

Ai Weiwei, a Chinese dissident, said “Even though we know governments do all kinds of things I was shocked by the information about the US surveillance operation, Prism. To me, it’s abusively using government powers to interfere in individuals’ privacy. This is an important moment for international society to reconsider and protect individual rights.”[88]

Kim Dotcom, a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur who owned Megaupload, which was closed by the U.S. federal government, said “We should heed warnings from Snowden because the prospect of an Orwellian society outweighs whatever security benefits we derive from Prism or Five Eyes.”[89] The Hong Kong law firm representing Dotcom expressed a fear that the communication between Dotcom and the firm had been compromised by U.S. intelligence programs.[90]

Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from Edward Snowden.[91]

Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said “We knew about their past efforts to trace our system. We have used our technical resources to foil their efforts and have been able to stop them from succeeding so far.”[92][93]

Related government Internet surveillance programs

A parallel program, code-named BLARNEY, gathers up metadata as it streams past choke points along the backbone of the Internet. BLARNEY’s summary, set down in the slides alongside a cartoon insignia of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat, describes it as “an ongoing collection program that leverages IC [intelligence community] and commercial partnerships to gain access and exploit foreign intelligence obtained from global networks.”[94]

A related program, a big data visualization system based on cloud computing and free and open-source software (FOSS) technology known as “Boundless Informant”, was disclosed in documents leaked to The Guardian and reported on June 8, 2013. A leaked, top secret map allegedly produced by Boundless Informant revealed the extent of NSA surveillance in the U.S.[95]

ThinThread

ThinThread is the name of a project that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) pursued during the 1990s, according to a May 17, 2006 article in The Baltimore Sun.[1] The program involved wiretapping and sophisticated analysis of the resulting data, but according to the article, the program was discontinued three weeks before the September 11, 2001 attacks due to the changes in priorities and the consolidation of U.S. intelligence authority.[2] The “change in priority” consisted of the decision made by the director of NSA General Michael V. Hayden to go with a concept called Trailblazer, despite the fact that ThinThread was a working prototype that protected the privacy of U.S. citizens.

ThinThread was dismissed and replaced by the Trailblazer Project, which lacked the privacy protections.[3] A consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was awarded a $280 million contract to develop Trailblazer in 2002.[4]

Trailblazer

Trailblazer was a United States National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks like the Internet. It was intended to track entities using communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.[1][2] It ran over budget, failed to accomplish critical goals, and was cancelled.

NSA whistleblowers J. Kirk Wiebe, William Binney, Ed Loomis, and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staffer Diane Roark complained to the Department of Defense’s Inspector General (IG) about waste, fraud, and abuse in the program, and the fact that a successful operating prototype existed, but was ignored when the Trailblazer program was launched. The complaint was accepted by the IG and an investigation began that lasted until mid-2005 when the final results were issued. The results were largely hidden, as the report given to the public was heavily (90%) redacted, while the original report was heavily classified, thus restricting the ability of most people to see it.

The people who filed the IG complaint were later raided by armed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. While the Government threatened to prosecute all who signed the IG report, it ultimately chose to pursue an NSA Senior Executive — Thomas Andrews Drake — who helped with the report internally to NSA and who had spoken with a reporter about the project. Drake was later charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. His defenders claimed this was retaliation.[3][4] The charges against him were later dropped, and he agreed to plead guilty to having committed a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something that Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project (which helped represent him) called an “act of civil disobedience”.[5]

Background

Trailblazer was chosen over a similar program named ThinThread, a less costly project which had been designed with built-in privacy protections for United States citizens.[4][3] Trailblazer was later linked to the NSA electronic surveillance program and the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.[3]

In 2002 a consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was chosen by the NSA to produce a technology demonstration platform in a contract worth $280 million. Project participants included Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Booz Allen Hamilton. The project was overseen by NSA Deputy Director William B. Black, Jr., an NSA worker who had gone to SAIC, and then been re-hired back to NSA by NSA director Michael Hayden in 2000.[6][7][8] SAIC had also hired a former NSA director to its management; Bobby Inman.[9] SAIC also participated in the concept definition phase of Trailblazer.[10][11]

Redacted version of the DoD Inspector General audit, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Project on Government Oversight and others. [12][5]

The NSA Inspector General issued a report on Trailblazer that “discussed improperly based contract cost increases, non-conformance in the management of the Statement of Work, and excessive labor rates for contractor personnel.” [13]

In 2004 the DoD IG report criticized the program (see the Whistleblowing section below). It said that the “NSA ‘disregarded solutions to urgent national security needs'” and “that TRAILBLAZER was poorly executed and overly expensive …” Several contractors for the project were worried about cooperating with DoD’s audit for fear of “management reprisal.”[5] The Director of NSA “nonconcurred” with several statements in the IG audit, and the report contains a discussion of those disagreements.[14]

In 2005, NSA director Michael Hayden told a Senate hearing that the Trailblazer program was several hundred million dollars over budget and years behind schedule.[15] In 2006 the program was shut down,[3] after having cost billions of US Dollars.[16] Several anonymous NSA sources told Hosenball of Newsweek later on that the project was a “wasteful failure”.[17]

The new project replacing Trailblazer is called Turbulence.[3]

Whistleblowing

According to a 2011 New Yorker article, in the early days of the project several NSA employees met with Diane S Roark, an NSA budget expert on the House Intelligence Committee. They aired their grievances about Trailblazer. In response, NSA director Michael Hayden sent out a memo saying that “individuals, in a session with our congressional overseers, took a position in direct opposition to one that we had corporately decided to follow … Actions contrary to our decisions will have a serious adverse effect on our efforts to transform N.S.A., and I cannot tolerate them.”[3]

In September 2002, several people filed a complaint with the Department of Defense IG’s office regarding problems with Trailblazer: they included Roark (aforementioned), ex-NSA senior analysts Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Senior Computer Systems Analyst Ed Loomis, who had quit the agency over concerns about its mismanagement of acquisition and allegedly illegal domestic spying.[3][18][19] A major source for the report was NSA senior officer Thomas Andrews Drake. Drake had been complaining to his superiors for some time about problems at the agency, and about the superiority of ThinThread over Trailblazer, for example, at protecting privacy.[19] Drake gave info to DoD during its investigation of the matter.[19] Roark also went to her boss at the House committee, Porter Goss, about problems, but was rebuffed.[20] She also attempted to contact William Renquist, the Supreme Court Chief Justice at the time.[19]

Drake’s own boss, Maureen Baginski, the third-highest officer at NSA, quit partly over concerns about the legality of its behavior.[3]

In 2003, the NSA IG (not the DoD IG)[19] had declared Trailblazer an expensive failure.[21] It had cost more than $1 billion.[8][22][23]

In 2005, the DoD IG produced a report on the result of its investigation of the complaint of Roark and the others in 2002. This report was not released to the public, but it has been described as very negative.[18] Mayer writes that it hastened the closure of Trailblazer, which was at the time in trouble from congress for being over budget.[3]

In November 2005, Drake contacted Siobhan Gorman, a reporter of The Baltimore Sun.[24][17][25] Gorman wrote several articles about problems at the NSA, including articles on Trailblazer. This series got her an award from the Society of Professional Journalists.[17]

In 2005, President George W. Bush ordered the FBI to find whoever had disclosed information about the NSA electronic surveillance program and its disclosure in the New York Times. Eventually, this investigation led to the people who had filed the 2002 DoD IG request, even though they had nothing to do with the New York Times disclosure. In 2007, the houses of Roark, Binney, and Wiebe were raided by armed FBI agents. According to Mayer, Binney claims the FBI pointed guns at his head and that of his wife. Wiebe said it reminded him of the Soviet Union.[3][18] None of these people were ever charged with any crime. Four months later, Drake was raided in November 2007 and his computers and documents were confiscated.

In 2010 Drake was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of obstructing justice, providing false information, and violating the Espionage Act of 1917,[17][26][27] part of President Barack Obama’s crackdown on whistleblowers and “leakers”.[24][17][28][18] The government tried to get Roark to testify to a conspiracy, and made similar requests to Drake, offering him a plea bargain. They both refused.[3]

In June 2011, the ten original charges against Drake were dropped, instead he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.[5]

Boundless Informant

Boundless Informant is a big data analysis and data visualization system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to give NSA managers summaries of NSA’s world wide data collection activities.[1] It is described in an unclassified, For Official Use Only Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) memo published by The Guardian.[2] According to a Top Secret heat map display also published by The Guardian and allegedly produced by the Boundless Informant program, almost 3 billion data elements from inside the United States were captured by NSA over a 30-day period ending in March 2013.

Data analyzed by Boundless Informant includes electronic surveillance program records (DNI) and telephone call metadata records (DNR) stored in an NSA data archive called GM-PLACE. It does not include FISA data, according to the FAQ memo. PRISM, a government codename for a collection effort known officially as US-984XN, which was revealed at the same time as Boundless Informant, is one source of DNR data. According to the map, Boundless Informant summarizes data records from 504 separate DNR and DNI collection sources (SIGADs). In the map, countries that are under surveillance are assigned a color from green, representing least coverage to red, most intensive.[3][4]

History

Slide showing that much of the world’s communications flow through the US.

Intelligence gathered by the United States government inside the United States or specifically targeting US citizens is legally required to be gathered in compliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) and under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court).[5][6][7]

NSA global data mining projects have existed for decades, but recent programs of intelligence gathering and analysis that include data gathered from inside the United States such as PRISM were enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under President Obama in December 2012.[8]

Boundless Informant was first publicly revealed on June 8, 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Guardian.[1][9] The newspaper identified its informant, at his request, as Edward Snowden, who worked at the NSA for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.[10]

Technology

According to published slides, Boundless Informant leverages Free and Open Source Software—and is therefore “available to all NSA developers”—and corporate services hosted in the cloud. The tool uses HDFS, MapReduce, and Cloudbase for data processing.[11]

Legality and FISA Amendments Act of 2008

The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) Section 702 is referenced in PRISM documents detailing the electronic interception, capture and analysis of metadata. Many reports and letters of concern written by members of Congress suggest that this section of FAA in particular is legally and constitutionally problematic, such as by targeting U.S. persons, insofar as “Collections occur in U.S.” as published documents indicate.[12][13][14][15]

The ACLU has asserted the following regarding the FAA: “Regardless of abuses, the problem with the FAA is more fundamental: the statute itself is unconstitutional.”[16]

Senator Rand Paul is introducing new legislation called the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act of 2013 to stop the NSA or other agencies of the United States government from violating the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution using technology and big data information systems like PRISM and Boundless Informant.[17][18]

ECHELON

ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement[1] (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, referred to by a number of abbreviations, including AUSCANNZUKUS[1] and Five Eyes).[2][3] It has also been described as the only software system which controls the download and dissemination of the intercept of commercial satellite trunk communications.[4]

ECHELON, according to information in the European Parliament document, “On the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)” was created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s.[5]

The system has been reported in a number of public sources.[6] Its capabilities and political implications were investigated by a committee of the European Parliament during 2000 and 2001 with a report published in 2001,[5] and by author James Bamford in his books on the National Security Agency of the United States.[4] The European Parliament stated in its report that the term ECHELON is used in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented indicates that it was the name for a signals intelligence collection system. The report concludes that, on the basis of information presented, ECHELON was capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally through the interception of communication bearers including satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once carried most Internet traffic) and microwave links.[5]

Bamford describes the system as the software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg.

Organization

The UKUSA intelligence community was assessed by the European Parliament (EP) in 2000 to include the signals intelligence agencies of each of the member states:

the Government Communications Headquarters of the United Kingdom,

the National Security Agency of the United States,

the Communications Security Establishment of Canada,

the Defence Signals Directorate of Australia, and

the Government Communications Security Bureau of New Zealand.

the National SIGINT Organisation (NSO) of The Netherlands

The EP report concluded that it seemed likely that ECHELON is a method of sorting captured signal traffic, rather than a comprehensive analysis tool.[5]

Capabilities

The ability to intercept communications depends on the medium used, be it radio, satellite, microwave, cellular or fiber-optic.[5] During World War II and through the 1950s, high frequency (“short wave”) radio was widely used for military and diplomatic communication,[7] and could be intercepted at great distances.[5] The rise of geostationary communications satellites in the 1960s presented new possibilities for intercepting international communications. The report to the European Parliament of 2001 states: “If UKUSA states operate listening stations in the relevant regions of the earth, in principle they can intercept all telephone, fax and data traffic transmitted via such satellites.”[5]

The role of satellites in point-to-point voice and data communications has largely been supplanted by fiber optics; in 2006, 99% of the world’s long-distance voice and data traffic was carried over optical-fiber.[8] The proportion of international communications accounted for by satellite links is said to have decreased substantially over the past few years[when?] in Central Europe to an amount between 0.4% and 5%.[5] Even in less-developed parts of the world, communications satellites are used largely for point-to-multipoint applications, such as video.[9] Thus, the majority of communications can no longer be intercepted by earth stations; they can only be collected by tapping cables and intercepting line-of-sight microwave signals, which is possible only to a limited extent.[5]

One method of interception is to place equipment at locations where fiber optic communications are switched. For the Internet, much of the switching occurs at relatively few sites. There have been reports of one such intercept site, Room 641A, in the United States. In the past[when?] much Internet traffic was routed through the U.S. and the UK, but this has changed; for example, in 2000, 95% of intra-German Internet communications was routed via the DE-CIX Internet exchange point in Frankfurt.[5] A comprehensive worldwide surveillance network is possible only if clandestine intercept sites are installed in the territory of friendly nations, and/or if local authorities cooperate. The report to the European Parliament points out that interception of private communications by foreign intelligence services is not necessarily limited to the U.S. or British foreign intelligence services.[5]

Most reports on ECHELON focus on satellite interception; testimony before the European Parliament indicated that separate but similar UK-US systems are in place to monitor communication through undersea cables, microwave transmissions and other lines.[10]

Controversy

See also: Industrial espionage

Intelligence monitoring of citizens, and their communications, in the area covered by the AUSCANNZUKUS security agreement has caused concern. British journalist Duncan Campbell and New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager asserted in the 1990s that the United States was exploiting ECHELON traffic for industrial espionage, rather than military and diplomatic purposes.[10] Examples alleged by the journalists include the gear-less wind turbine technology designed by the German firm Enercon[5][11] and the speech technology developed by the Belgian firm Lernout & Hauspie.[12] An article in the US newspaper Baltimore Sun reported in 1995 that European aerospace company Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994 after the US National Security Agency reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials to secure the contract.[13][14]

In 2001, the Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System recommended to the European Parliament that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy, because economic espionage with ECHELON has been conducted by the US intelligence agencies.[5]

Bamford provides an alternative view, highlighting that legislation prohibits the use of intercepted communications for commercial purposes, although he does not elaborate on how intercepted communications are used as part of an all-source intelligence process.

Hardware

According to its website, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is “a high technology organization … on the frontiers of communications and data processing”. In 1999 the Australian Senate Joint Standing Committee on Treaties was told by Professor Desmond Ball that the Pine Gap facility was used as a ground station for a satellite-based interception network. The satellites were said to be large radio dishes between 20 and 100 meters in diameter in geostationary orbits.[citation needed] The original purpose of the network was to monitor the telemetry from 1970s Soviet weapons, air defence radar, communications satellites and ground based microwave communications.[15]

Name

The European Parliament’s Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System stated: “It seems likely, in view of the evidence and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of individuals and organisations, including American sources, that its name is in fact ECHELON, although this is a relatively minor detail.”[5] The U.S. intelligence community uses many code names (see, for example, CIA cryptonym).

Former NSA employee Margaret Newsham claims that she worked on the configuration and installation of software that makes up the ECHELON system while employed at Lockheed Martin, for whom she worked from 1974 to 1984 in Sunnyvale, California, US, and in Menwith Hill, England, UK.[16] At that time, according to Newsham, the code name ECHELON was NSA’s term for the computer network itself. Lockheed called it P415. The software programs were called SILKWORTH and SIRE. A satellite named VORTEX intercepted communications. An image available on the internet of a fragment apparently torn from a job description shows Echelon listed along with several other code names.[17]

Ground stations

The 2001 European Parliamentary (EP) report[5] lists several ground stations as possibly belonging to, or participating in, the ECHELON network. These include:

Likely satellite intercept stations

The following stations are listed in the EP report (p. 54 ff) as likely to have, or to have had, a role in intercepting transmissions from telecommunications satellites:

Hong Kong (since closed)

Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station (Geraldton, Western Australia)

Room 641A

Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency that commenced operations in 2003 and was exposed in 2006.[1][2]

Description

Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before SBC purchased AT&T.[1] The room was referred to in internal AT&T documents as the SG3 [Study Group 3] Secure Room. It is fed by fiber optic lines from beam splitters installed in fiber optic trunks carrying Internet backbone traffic[3] and, as analyzed by J. Scott Marcus, a former CTO for GTE and a former adviser to the FCC, who has access to all Internet traffic that passes through the building, and therefore “the capability to enable surveillance and analysis of internet content on a massive scale, including both overseas and purely domestic traffic.”[4] Former director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, William Binney, has estimated that 10 to 20 such facilities have been installed throughout the United States.[2]

The room measures about 24 by 48 feet (7.3 by 15 m) and contains several racks of equipment, including a Narus STA 6400, a device designed to intercept and analyze Internet communications at very high speeds.[1]

The very existence of the room was revealed by a former AT&T technician, Mark Klein, and was the subject of a 2006 class action lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T.[5] Klein claims he was told that similar black rooms are operated at other facilities around the country.

Room 641A and the controversies surrounding it were subjects of an episode of Frontline, the current affairs documentary program on PBS. It was originally broadcast on May 15, 2007. It was also featured on PBS’s NOW on March 14, 2008. The room was also covered in the PBS Nova episode “The Spy Factory”.

Lawsuit

Basic diagram of how the alleged wiretapping was accomplished. From EFF court filings[4]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecommunication company of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in a massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications. On July 20, 2006, a federal judge denied the government’s and AT&T’s motions to dismiss the case, chiefly on the ground of the States Secrets Privilege, allowing the lawsuit to go forward. On August 15, 2007, the case was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was dismissed on December 29, 2011 based on a retroactive grant of immunity by Congress for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.[6] A different case by the EFF was filed on September 18, 2008, titled Jewel v. NSA.

PRISM: A clandestine national security electronic surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) which can target customers of participating corporations outside or inside the United States

Main Core: A personal and financial database storing information of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security.[7] The data mostly comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, as well as other government sources.[7]

Story 1: Democrats Lose 50 Year War on Poverty Start 100 Year War on Work: Millennial Moocher Mania — Grow The Government Shrink The Economy and Employment! — Progressive Permanent Poverty People — Videos Videos

The Economist Who Exposed ObamaCare

The Chicago professor examined the law’s incentives for the poor not to get a job or work harder, and this week Beltway budgeteers agreed.

By JOSEPH RAGO

In September, two weeks before the Affordable Care Act was due to launch, President Obama declared that “there’s no serious evidence that the law . . . is holding back economic growth.” As for repealing ObamaCare, he added, “That’s not an agenda for economic growth. You’re not going to meet an economist who says that that’s a number-one priority in terms of boosting growth and jobs in this country—at least not a serious economist.”

In a way, Mr. Obama had a point: “Never met him,” says economist Casey Mulligan. If the unfamiliarity is mutual, the confusion is all presidential. Mr. Mulligan studies how government choices influence the incentives and rewards for work—and many more people may recognize the University of Chicago professor as a serious economist after this week. That’s because, more than anyone, Mr. Mulligan is responsible for the still-raging furor over the Congressional Budget Office’s conclusion that ObamaCare will, in fact, harm growth and jobs.

Rarely are political tempers so raw over an 11-page appendix to a dense budget projection for the next decade. But then the CBO—Congress’s official fiscal scorekeeper, widely revered by Democrats and Republicans alike as the gold standard of economic analysis—reported that by 2024 the equivalent of 2.5 million Americans who were otherwise willing and able to work before ObamaCare will work less or not at all as a result of ObamaCare.

As the CBO admits, that’s a “substantially larger” and “considerably higher” subtraction to the labor force than the mere 800,000 the budget office estimated in 2010. The overall level of labor will fall by 1.5% to 2% over the decade, the CBO figures.

Mr. Mulligan’s empirical research puts the best estimate of the contraction at 3%. The CBO still has some of the economics wrong, he said in a phone interview Thursday, “but, boy,